the squire
by litvirg
Summary: Medieval AU where Clarke is a princess who just wants to learn to fight, and Bellamy is a knight who thinks she's just a kitchen servant.
1. Chapter 1

Her foot caught on a rock as she stumbled back from a blow to the chest. She felt heat bloom in her throat as she coughed, retching, tumbling backwards until finally the breath was knocked out of her as her back hit the ground. Dirt flew up around her, coating her tunic in a light dust she wanted to wipe away, but her arms sagged, muscles weary and aching. She let her head fall back.

"Get back up," she heard him growl at her as his feet clomped closer and closer to where her head landed in the dirt. The sound of his boots scraping along the ground was muffled by the dirt and grass surrounding, enveloping, pressing into her ear. She hated that his voice didn't sound nearly as strained as hers would be when she tried to speak. Low and steady, as always, and it was more irritating than ever. She could barely hear him over the ragged sounds of her own breath, but he stood above her, still as a statue, barely sweating.

She spat a clump of mud out from her mouth and turned to glare at him.

"We've done enough," she huffed out. "I need a break."

She looked up to see him frowning at her, a crease between his eyebrows. She watched as a drop of sweat slipped down from his hair, his all too shaggy hair, and get stuck in the squished pocket between his eyebrows. Her own skin was coated in sweat. It was soaking through her hair, tucked up into the cap on her head, sealing it all in. It was dripping down her face, down her neck, down her back. She'd thought she knew what it felt like to be suffocating, but having a thick layer of sweat over each and every one of her pores was teaching her that she didn't actually know much.

Bellamy, of course, agreed.

"Don't waste my time, Griff."

She glared up at him. "We've been at this for hours," she said. "Just give me a few minutes." She let her head drop back down onto the dirt where she lay. She saw his heels lift up from the dirt as his knees bent and he crouched next to her. His chainmail fluttered against the ground, clunking against the solid dirt below as he reached an arm out to turn her chin to face him.

"If you're going to practice," he said. "You're going to practice right. You're never going to ask for a break in a real fight. Now, get. Up." He picked up her sword and tossed it down in front of her nose.

If she was going to practice right, she was going to need to stay alive. She wasn't sure how likely that was with Bellamy as her coach. She wasn't too sure he wouldn't actually run her through with his sword in order to prove a point about 'fighting through the pain.' She wondered if he would go away if she played dead.

An annoyed huff came from above her.

She pushed her palms into the dirt, propping herself up. She ignored how her muscles screamed in protest, and hauled herself up onto her knees. She stopped, leaning her head forward and gulped down a few big breaths. Her fingers wrapped around the hilt of her sword tightly as her eyes closed.

"You're weak, Griff," Bellamy taunted her. It was barely above a whisper, but it niggled its way into her ear and she felt anger surge through her.

Her face grew hot, and the skin of her knuckles went white as she gripped the sword tighter at his words. "I. Am not," she pushed herself up with the tip of her sword digging into the dirt. " _Weak_."

"Fine, you're scared then," he kicked the blade of her sword, taking away the support it had been offering her. She tumbled forward a bit before she caught herself. "Doesn't matter. Either will get you killed on the battle field."

Clarke pushed herself up the rest of the way. "I am not weak," she growled. "And I am sure as hell not afraid of _you_."

She saw his teeth sink into the side of his cheek as he hid a smile. A glimmer of pride flickered in his eyes as he held out his own sword in front of him, taking his stance.

"Okay," he said. "Then prove it." Then he swung out his blade, leaving her just enough time to thrust her own sword forward to meet it. At the sound of the metal crashing together, he smiled down at her.

"Again."

 _Two Weeks Earlier_

The guards outside her room seemed to think that she couldn't hear them when they shuffled around and whispered. As if she couldn't hear the thumping footsteps as they moved their legs to block the door or the scuffling as they tried to push back whoever it was that was stretching out an arm to rap their knuckles on the thick wooden door. But she heard it, she heard it every time.

She made a mental note to sneak extra cakes out of the kitchen for her guards that night.

Before she could sneak into the side chambers she heard more whispering and the sighs of her guards. Then, a knock. Clarke ignored the knock on her door and suck further down onto the floor, her back pressed into the side of her bed. She let her head fall back and rest against the quilt, pillowing behind her head. Whoever it was knocked again and she shut her eyes.

 _The princess isn't at home_ , she thought. _Tell the queen to give it a rest_.

She heard the door creak open anyway, and the sound of footsteps walking carefully around the table in the center of her room, and then to the foot of the bed. He sighed at her from the end of the mattress and she opened one eye.

"Hey, Clarke."

Wells. Of course it was Wells.

She felt her lungs expand as she took a shaky breath in. The stone on her chest got a little lighter, and a little smaller. She didn't try to blink back the tears welling in her eyes anymore, but she scooted over, pulling her knees up under her in order to make room for him on the floor.

"Wells," she said, but he cut her off with a wave of his hand. He raised a bottle in his left hand and grabbed two glasses from her table in his right.

"Birthday present for your father," he said.

He slid down on the floor next to Clarke and kicked his boots off, shoving them toward where the fire sat, dying slowly, in the hearth. He set the glasses on the ground between them and poured a generous amount in each. She reached over and grabbed it, about to down it in one, when Wells held his glass up.

"To King Jake," he whispered.

"To King Jake," she said, throat scratchy. She brought it to her lips and let it all slip through her lips and burn as it floated down her tongue and the back of her throat. She liked the way it burned. It took away from the aching in her chest where the stone was digging in, pressing down, strangling her breath.

"Have you been in here all day?" he asked her, turning to rest his head next to hers on the quilt. His drink was still half full. Always better at pacing himself.

She nodded, holding out her cup for more. He raised an eyebrow at her in warning, but poured another glass anyway.

"Your mother has been looking for you," he muttered between sips.

Clarke rolled her head back and groaned. "Yeah, well." She didn't really know what to say to that. She didn't know how to explain that she didn't want to see her mom, or that she'd bribed the guards outside her doors to keep everyone away from her room, saying she wasn't in there, saying she was sick, whatever it took. No surprise that Wells saw through it.

"Monty tried to get by them to give you some sort of 'pain reliever' earlier," Wells said jerking his head toward the doors, toward the guards, and she chuckled. "Unfortunately, that didn't end very well for him. He may stink of rotten tomatoes for a few days, so stay upwind."

"How'd you get past?" Clarke asked, curious. Grateful, but curious.

Wells shot her a wink. "Can't give away all my secrets, now can I princess?"

They both leaned back, empty glasses discarded in front of them. Clarke tilted her head over, watching Wells and the flames dance over his face. How many times had he snuck in her chambers over the years, extra food, cakes, wine in his hand? How many times had they stayed up late by the fire, sometimes sneaking Monty in as well?

How many times had they heard the booming voice of the king down the hall, letting them know to shuffle into the side chambers before someone came in to check on Clarke?

Wells tapped a finger on her knee.

"How do you feel, Clarkey?"

Clarke leaned her head onto his shoulder and sighed, the stone rolling across her rib cage as she slid into his side.

"Afraid," she whispered.

Her hair wouldn't stay tucked up in the servants cap. As soon as she would get one side all tucked up, half from the other would trickle out, tickling her neck. She spent the better part of twenty minutes trying to get it all to stay just by shoving it up and wished, not for the first time, that her mother would let her wear it short, cropped just against her head.

But princess don't have short hair, apparently.

She sighed and, reluctantly, decided that if she was going to get it done in time, she would just have to pin it. She hated pinning her hair. It was exactly as painful as it sounded. But she made quick work of it, wincing a few times when the pin caught a hair and dragged it the wrong way, pulling on her scalp, but it made it quicker and easier to slip the cap on.

She choked out a laugh when she saw her reflection in the mirror. A princess in a gown, hair tucked up into a servants cap. She looked ridiculous.

She went back over to her bed where the bag of clothes Monty had brought her lay. She bent over it to rifle through and find what she needed, and smirked when she caught a slight whiff of tomatoes. She'd have to remember to tell Wells.

She slipped out of her dress, and watched it fall to the ground in a pool around her ankles. It felt good. She stood there for a moment, the silk brushing her ankles, before she grabbed the cloth from her mattress and began wrapping her chest. She needed to look as different from the princess as she possibly could.

Monty had snuck her extra servant's clothes. She felt bad about taking them, and she had a sneaky feeling that they were just spare clothes from his own wardrobe—they were made for someone a bit thinner and taller than herself—but she slipped them on and found she didn't look half as ridiculous as she thought she would.

She also didn't look like herself. Which was perfect.

She heard a knock on the door and she quickly shuffled behind the changing screen.

"Clarke?"

Wells. Of course.

Clarke let out a sigh and stepped out from behind the screen.

"It's late, Wells. You shouldn't be here."

He raised an eyebrow at her. _Like we've ever followed the rules_ , it said. She shrugged, knowing he was right, but knowing that he was going to fight her on this, that he was going to block the door or the window or whichever way she was planning on leaving or he was going to attach himself to her side and refuse to leave. It's just what Wells did.

"I can't explain it. And I don't really want to," she said when she saw him raise a questioning hand and gesture at her appearance. "I need you to trust me though."

"We've been friends our whole lives, Clarke," he said with a smirk. "Of course I don't trust you. You're nothing but trouble."

Clarke tried to scowl at that, but a peal of laughter burst out of her and she couldn't control it. Wells smiled back, relieved, but stepped a bit closer.

"Whatever it is you're planning on doing," he whispered to her, shooting a glance at the door to make sure it was closed. "I'd like to help. I've got your back Clarke."

She pulled him into a hug, and rubbed the top of his hair as she pulled away.

"Don't worry," she whispered back. "I'm not leaving the grounds. Just need a bit of freedom."

She could tell Wells didn't quite believe her, but he nodded and backed away. He looked around the room and saw a bit of leftover, uneaten food on the table and he plopped himself down in front of it.

"Go out the window," he said. "The patrol has already gone by, and won't be back until they've done a full perimeter. I'll stay here a bit and when I leave, if anybody asks I'll say we were eating together and you got a headache and needed to lie down."

Clarke walked over to the table to give him a quick hug and press a kiss to his cheek. "Thank you," she whispered. "I owe you."

"I'll be sure to remember that!" he called as she opened the window and lowered herself out.

Her mother would be horrified if she found out just how easy it was to sneak around the grounds of the castle at night. The same guards took the same routes every night, and if you dressed like a servant of the court, apparently they didn't spare you a second glance.

Though, her mother probably didn't expect her to be sneaking around the citadel at night dressed as a servant, disguising herself as a _commoner_ , especially not with what happened to her father, and especially not with the unrest in the lower towns.

But Clarke wasn't going to sit up in her tower to rot, and she wasn't going to sit in her chambers suffocating, and she wasn't going to let the gnawing fear that had grown as big as a boulder fester in her stomach, in her chest, in her lungs, any longer.

The route to the armory wasn't tricky. Her window let out just a few feet above a ledge in the wall, and if she walked along it a few paces to the left, there was a tree she could reach out and cling to. Then, after climbing the tree it was simply a matter of weaving her way through a few corridors, past the courtyard (that was the trickiest bit because she had to either take the route inside the castle halls, along the courtyard to the other side—which ran the risk of people inside the castle recognizing her—or she had to go out in the open of the courtyard and risk being stopped by someone for walking across the grounds that late at night) and then down one final corridor, into the armory. Just outside the armory was a practice space, usually locked at night, but Monty, being a little light fingered for the apprentice of the court's physician, managed to get her the key she needed.

She decided to risk recognition and walked through the halls instead of out in the courtyard, but she really shouldn't have worried. No one was around, the guards had walked past moments before she got there, and it was a straight shot to where she needed to go.

Still, she felt like she hadn't let out a breath until she yanked open the door to the armory and collapsed against it as she shut it tight behind her.

She hadn't spent much time in the armory in her life. She and Wells would sneak into it when they were little, only to later get their hands slapped for doing something so stupid. A sword could have slipped and cut them, her mother said. Or an axe. Or a mace or a bludgeon or a hammer. Then what would have happened? Would the games have been worth it then?

Then it was her father who took her. He'd put a finger over his lips as he turned to Clarke, away from the queen, and nod his head toward the door. Clarke would sneak past the legs of the guards, small and quick enough to slip around them before they noticed, and meet her father out in the courtyard, where he'd carry her or swing her around or chase her or get chased or tickle her or get ticked. Where he'd toss her a stick and they'd spar because, he said, every princess should know how to fight. He'd teach her simple steps, and how to make simple blocks, and when the sticks they were using became cracked, or the bark started to strip off, he'd hold his hands up and concede, and then he'd lead her into the armory to show her what a real sword looked like.

 _"You're not going to splinter one of these easily,"_ he'd say as he pulled a sword out of its holster and hold it flat in his palms for her to look at. She was allowed to run a single finger down the blade's flat middle, so long as she stayed away from the edges, and she was allowed to wrap both hands around the hilt, so long as she did not swing it.

 _"First you have to master swinging those sticks around,"_ he'd say laughing when she asked if they could practice with real swords. " _Then maybe we can make you a sword of your own to practice with."_

He died before he taught her to swing a blade.

She let out a heavy breath, and opened her eyes. It looked exactly as she remembered it. All the swords in one place, the shields lining the opposite walls. Shields with different sigils, and colors. Shields with coats of arms that didn't display the Gryphon, but ones that she knew were loyal to them. She reached her fingers out and pressed them along the front of a shield so beaten and bent that you could no longer see the coat of arms. Her palm fit perfectly into the small dent at the bottom and she let the feeling of the cool metal wash over her hand.

She backed away from the shields, nearly knocking into the rack that held all the practice swords. She put a hand out behind her, bumping the hilt of a sword before she steadied herself and turned around. She picked one with a golden hilt and pulled it out.

She'd forgotten the noise swords made as they were pulled out, ready to be used. A high swishing noise, and she heard it, and remembered her father's laugh alongside it.

She sat on a stool, resting the sword on her knees. She ran a finger along the inside of the blade, the pad of her finger pressing into the steel, slowing sliding down the flat part of the blade, careful to stay away from the edges.

She felt a heat prickle the corner of her eyes so she shut them before it could slip out, taking a moment to catch a few breaths. When she was about to stand, make her way to the practice ring, swing a blade instead of a stick for once, she heard a banging from the other side of the armory, and quickly shoved the sword back into place.

She pressed a hand into her pocket, checking that they key was still there, and she ran out of the armory, slamming the door behind her. It didn't matter if she made noise anymore.

It took her about half the time to get back to her room as it had to get to the armory, and she may have been spotted, and she definitely had scrapes on her knees from the tree, but she tumbled in through the window, and collapsed on her bed without bothering to change out of her clothes.

"Tomorrow," she promised to no one in particular. "I'll go back tomorrow."

Most of her time in the castle was spent doodling.

She was supposed to sit alongside her mother and learn the responsibilities of a Queen, to watch her mother rule and take notes so that one day, when the crown rested heavy on her own head, she would have a model to follow.

Unfortunately, sitting beside the Queen day after day, year after year, became quite the dull affair, and Clarke had taken to bringing the sketchbook Wells and Monty had given her for her last birthday in order to keep herself entertained. She could feel her mother's eye burning into the side of her face, but she kept her head turned down, watching the lines she dragged across the paper grow larger and thicker and more defined. It wasn't as if she had never seen her mother address the people before. There was a long line of them, she would listen to one later.

"Daydreaming about your adventures?" she heard whispered in her ear.

Wells stood behind her, smirking.

Wells never seemed to mind all the courtly responsibilities they had. He freely went to things like this, stood and listened attentively. Watched as his father advised the Queen, watched how they both interacted with their people. Clarke thought that Wells would probably make a better King than she would a Queen.

He smiled down at her sketch, and she glanced over what she had drawn. It was a sword, like the one she had pulled from the rack the night before.

She shook her head at Wells. "Not daydreaming," she whispered. "Planning."

She left earlier that night, before the guards had passed her room for the perimeter patrol, and made her way to the armory quicker than the night before. Wells was still worried, Monty was still happy to help, and she was itching to pick up a sword again.

She was going to swing it this time, she swore to herself, no more looking, no more playing. Time to practice.

She knew it was probably stupid to go two nights in a row, especially when she had left the night before in a clangor, footsteps echoing throughout the halls, crash of the door sure to have been noticed by someone. But she needed to. She couldn't explain it but there was a pull, like a rope knotted at the bottom of her ribs, pulling her from her window, across the castle grounds, into the armory.

She didn't waste any time breathing it in, or letting the smell of everything—the armor, the shields, the sweat, the metal—wash over her, she didn't press her hand into the dented shield, she didn't run her finger down the flattened blade to remember her father.

She just picked up a sword, pulled the key out of her pocket, and unlocked the door to the practice space.

There was a post on one end of the practice field, covered in sacks filled with hay. They were draped and tied around the post vaguely in the shape of a person. She gripped the hilt of the sword tightly, and moved over to it, lifting the blade and swinging once, hard.

There was a dull _thunk_ , and then she let her blade drop to the ground. She hadn't even made a mark.

She lifted the sword once more and tried again. Nothing. Again and again and again and again until her shoulders and armpits were sore from the constant rotation of the lifting the sword and letting it drop, lifting and dropping, lifting and dropping. She felt a few beads of sweat trickle down her forehead across her brow and she swiped her arm across her face to get rid of them.

As she moved, she realized how much she stank. The layer of sweat working its way over her body from the movements and the soreness in her muscles, her ragged breath all made her stop and take a breath, smiling as she felt the sweat from her chest seep into her shirt. She lifted the sword once more and swung, hard.

Finally, there was a tiny cut in the fabric, bits of hay sticking out. She plucked a straw from the hole and put it in her pocket.

She sat on the table as Monty bustled about the room, grabbing bottles and vials and powders.

"I'm just a little sore," she said.

He nodded and dropped them all on the table beside her.

"I've been experimenting a bit," he said quickly. "How open are you to trying something new?" He held up a salve in a jar, a bright purple salve, and quirked an eyebrow at her.

"Exactly how experimental is it?" she asked tentatively taking the jar from his hands. She unscrewed the cap and gave it a sniff. It smelled, surprisingly, of flowers and honey.

"Nothing is likely to happen," he said with a wave of his hand. He sat down on a stool in front of her. "I think I worked out all the kinks with the first batch."

 _What's the worst that could happen?_ she thought as she sniffed it once more. _Perhaps a bit of webbing in the fingers, a small patch of scales along the stomach, nothing too terrible. It may even help in warding off those god awful suitors mother keeps inviting to dinner._ Shrugging, Clarke scooped a bit out with her finger and started rubbing it on the back of her neck. It was cool at first, she hissed in surprise when it made contact with her skin, but a low heat spread as she worked it into her skin with her fingers.

"You think?" she said skeptically.

"Well, you won't turn green or get a funny rash or anything," he said.

Clarke barked out a laugh and scooped a bit more out, rubbing it along her shoulders. One thing she was certain of, when she was Queen, Monty would officially be made the court physician, and he'd be allowed whatever tools and herbs he needed. His methods were a bit…unorthodox, sure. But pain relief was absolutely his forte.

She watched him bite into an apple, smiling, as she continued to rub the salve into her sore muscles. The scent of honey washed over her as the heat from the salve sank into her muscles, loosening them up, unwinding the knots, and her stomach growled loudly.

Monty tossed her an apple and a chunk of bread which she bit into hungrily.

"How long are you going to keep this up?" he asked her as she chewed.

"Until I can swing a sword and do some damage," she replied.

"I think anyone can do some damage when they swing a sword." Monty grabbed one of the potions he brought to the table and poured a few drops of it into two glasses, then grabbed the pitcher of mead on the physician's table and poured it over the potion. He handed one to Clarke.

"What's this?" she asked.

"Just trust me," Monty said, taking a sip of his own. "Wells is worried, you know."

Clarke rolled her eyes. "Wells is always worried. That's his thing."

Monty shrugged in understanding but watched her with a careful eye. She knew he was worried too, worried that she might be caught, and get herself in trouble, worried that she would hurt herself, worried that someone would find out he was helping the princess sneak out of her chambers and wander the grounds every night.

"No one will find out you helped me," she said, hoping to reassure him.

Monty's smile dropped off his face. "That's not what I'm worried about, Clarke, and you know it." He took a deep breath and carried on. "Things are changing, Clarke. It's not like it was when we were kids. You have to be more careful."

"I'm being careful!"

"Is that why I heard you nearly knock down the entire armory as you ran away from it that first night?"

Oops. He had her there.

"That's not going to happen again."

"It better not," Monty scolded. "I'm not going to help you if you're going to be reckless about it."

Clarke took another sip of the drink he'd made, and found he really was right. There was a pleasant humming crawling from her chest to her fingers and toes. Not overwhelming, not like when Wells would sneak wine into her room and they'd drink until the sun came up. More hesitant than that. But she didn't even feel the aching in her muscles and her head felt, lighter, clearer.

"Look," she said. "I just want to get some practice. You said yourself, things are changing." He opened his mouth, maybe to protest, maybe to warn her or tell her to be careful, but she didn't give him the chance. "It's what my father would have wanted."

Monty held her gaze for a moment, before dropping his eyes down to his cup. He knocked back the rest of it, setting the empty cup on the table behind him.

"Alright, then," he said. "Better rest up then, if you're going back tonight."

"Got anything that might help me relax?"

Another grin split Monty's face. "Well there is something I've been meaning to try…"

She picked the same sword.

The golden hilt got slick with her sweat as she gripped it tighter and tighter as she grew more and more weary. She landed blow after tragic blow against the dummy, barely making a mark, barely moving it at all, hit after hit after hit.

Her arms began to ache in protest. Worse than the night before, worse than that morning. She didn't even want to think about how they would hurt when she had to raise them above her head to be dressed the following day.

She let out a yell one last time as she swung her sword at the dummy, and dropped it to the ground when it made contact.

She heard a low chuckle from behind her. She whipped around and saw a pair or legs sticking out from the shadows, attached to someone leaning up against the door to the armory.

"Who's there?" she called out.

"I might ask you the same question." The voice was low and gravely. And amused. He was amused at her pathetic attempts. She felt humiliation wash over her, but she stood a little straighter.

"I'm not the one lurking in the shadows, am I?"

She saw one of his feet swing back, pushing off of the wall, pushing his whole body into the dim light in the middle of the yard. He was a knight.

She sucked in a quiet breath and swore to herself.

He stepped closer to her. Not close enough to see her face clearly, or the blonde tendrils that had worked their way out of her cap and were sticking to her neck, glued down by sweat, but close enough for her to get a good look at him.

He was young, younger than most of the knights she knew, younger than guards stationed outside her doors at night, younger than the ones who escorted her mother around the castle. He looked about her age, maybe a bit older. And he was tall. The top of her head might just brush the underside of his chin if she stood close enough. He looked more ragged than the knights she knew, chainmail not quite properly fitting him, as if it wasn't made for him, but borrowed for the time being. And he had a mop of black hair, strands falling over onto his forehead in a way that she knew her mother would detest.

A small smile was playing at the corners of his mouth, lips pulling into his tanned cheeks.

"How'd you get in here?" she asked.

"Same way as you, I'd imagine," he said without missing a beat. "It's easy to get in here once the person before you has already stolen the key."

"I didn't steal it!" she lied.

His eyes raked over her appearance. She tried to read his face, but she couldn't tell what he was thinking. He still had a slightly amused glimmer in his eye, but his brows were pulled together when he took in her ill-fitting close and her blistered hands.

"Oh yeah?" he said. "Then tell me, how did a kitchen servant manage to get the keys to the armory?"

She was trapped. There was no way out of it. She could either tell him who she was and be reported back to the queen, who would then put extra guards on her all the time, maybe even station one outside her window at night—or she could say she was a servant of the court and have him report her anyway, and either be punished as a servant or hope someone would recognize her before she was put in the stocks—or worse.

She bit her tongue.

He raised an eyebrow waiting for her to answer, but when it was clear she wasn't going to, he walked around her, over to the dummy and picked up her sword where the sword lay on the ground behind her.

"It's your form," he started to say. He tightened his grip on the hilt of the sword and began to arrange his feet in a defensive stance. "You have to—"

But she decided not to wait around to hear what she had to. When he took the sword in his hands and positioned himself in front of the practice dummy, she took her chance and bolted from the yard, slamming the door behind her.

She could already hear the lecture from Wells when he heard from Monty how loud she was ringing in her ears, but at least it would slow the knight down a bit as he chased her.

Clarke spent the entirety of the next morning shaking in her boots, jumping at every noise she heard. Especially footsteps. Footsteps were the worst. Each one pounded in time with her heart, rattling against her ribs.

She was going to be caught. She was sure of it.

She made her way through the castle's corridors, having to fight the urge to duck into nooks and crannies any time she heard the distinctive rattle of chainmail, or the laughter of the knights come back from training. She forced herself to press on, ducking her head none the less. She hoped it would be enough.

She was making her way back from the throne room to her own chambers when an arm reached out and wrapped around her own, yanking her into a small storage cupboard, a hand clapping over her mouth as she shrieked.

Yanking her body away, pressing herself up against the wall she saw that it was only Monty. She swatted his arm.

"Monty!" she hissed. "You nearly stopped my heart!" She let out a breath, collapsing against the wall.

"What happened last night? I heard yelling in the courtyard."

Monty's brows were knit together, his hands playing with the strap of his bag, and Clarke swore that though they bore no resemblance in their outward appearance, he had never looked less like himself and more like Wells in his entire life.

"I was…intruded upon," Clarke grit out. She couldn't help but grind her teeth at the memory of the arrogant knight, leaning up against the wall, watching her for who knew how long, smirking at her, laughing.

Monty snapped his fingers in front of her face. "Clarke? Who was it? Did they recognize you?"

"No," she said immediately, without thinking. But she had no idea. He didn't seem to know who she was, he called her a kitchen servant after all. Was he bluffing? Did he recognize her right away? "He was a knight. One I didn't recognize."

"You can't go back, Clarke. They're going put extra patrols out if they think people are sneaking around the grounds at night, especially if they think they're getting into private rooms with stolen keys."

Monty was holding her arm, waiting for her to promise. He wasn't going to let her go until she agreed.

She knew he was right, anyway. There would be extra patrols around if the knight had reported her—which he did, no doubt.

"Okay," she whispered. "I'm too sore to go tonight anyway." She held out her blistered hands as evidence.

Monty dug into his bag, pulling out the salve he'd given her the day before. It was in a larger jar, it even had a bow wrapped around the rim.

"Here," he said shoving it into her hands. "I made another batch for you. Put it on before you go to sleep, those blisters should be gone by morning." He hesitated, narrowing his eyes at her. She hated when he did that. It was worse than when Wells did it. "Look, I know you're going to go back. Just be better than you have been, okay?" He gave her shoulder a friendly punch. "I don't think you know the meaning of the word careful, if the past few nights are anything to go by, but no screaming, no slamming doors, no knocking down the entire armory, and you should be fine."

Clarke opened her mouth to protest, but he held up a hand.

"Excuse me, your Highness, but I don't believe I've finished." He smirked at her. "I think you're stupid for going back tonight, but if it's another close call like yesterday, don't run back to your rooms. You'll just be giving yourself away. Come to my chambers and you can hide out there a bit until the coast is clear, yeah?"

Clarke pulled him into a hug. "Thanks, Monty."

"Yeah, I still think you're a lunatic for going back tonight, don't think I'm with you on this one." He raised an eyebrow at her. "But I won't tell Wells about the knight."

She let out a sigh of relief. If Wells had any idea that she'd been spotted by someone, he'd either block her window himself (conveniently forgetting which one of them was the stronger wrestler) or follow her across the grounds to watch over her himself.

Neither option was very appealing.

"Thank you!" she said giving him another squeeze. "I owe you." That seemed to be happening a lot, lately.

"I'll keep that in mind."

She knew Monty was right. She knew it was stupid to go back.

She knew it as she pinned her hair up under the cap, and she knew it as she wrapped her chest in the long strip of fabric before pulling on Monty's old clothes, and she knew it as she tucked the old brass key into her pocket and lowered herself out of the window.

She was beginning to think it was less stupid when she turned the key and opened the door and found no one there.

The practice field was empty and there were no footsteps outside the armory to warn her of anyone making their way toward her. Maybe the knight hadn't told anyone. Maybe he didn't want to let on that he'd seen someone breaking into private rooms, and instead of intervening, he'd just sat back and laughed. Maybe he was embarrassed that he hadn't been able to catch her.

She let herself stretch out a bit before she started, sighing at the release of pressure in her lower back when she grabbed her wrists above her head and twisted back and forth.

She ignored the blisters on her hands as she grabbed the familiar sword and gave a few practice swings in the air before stepping in front of the dummy. She stood straight on, sword out at her side, pointed forward at the still figure in front of her.

"You'll never even land a blow if you stand like that," she heard a voice from behind her. Startled, she jumped back, losing her posture. She whipped around, not realizing how close he had been to her, the top of her sword nearly scraping against his stomach as she whirled around to face him. She suddenly couldn't find any air in her lungs.

"You'll be run through before you even get the chance to strike," he explained further, though she didn't ask for it.

"What are you doing here?" she breathed out.

"Well," he said, sticking his hands up in the air. "I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. I didn't tell anyone about last night, because I figured you wouldn't be stupid enough to come back here tonight, but this part of the castle grounds is on my route, so I had to check."

"Why weren't you here the first night, then?"

"You came here three nights in a row?" He barked out a laugh. "You're a lot dumber than you look, kid."

Clarke felt a wave of anger crash over her. She wanted to swat the stupid, smug, smirk right off his face. "I'm not stupid," she spat. "And I'm not a kid."

He actually snorted. "Okay."

She held her sword up to his chin, not caring how reckless it was, or that she was basically just proving his point about her stupidity. He didn't have the right to just walk in and insult her. If he wanted to punish her, fine. But it was unattractive for a cat to play with the mouse after catching it.

"Look," she said. "Just because you're a knight doesn't mean you get to treat people as if they're below you." She bent her arm to allow her to walk a bit closer, and she hoped it looked more threatening than ridiculous. "You don't even know me."

"I know you'd be dead in a fight already," he whispered, leaning his face closer to hers. She could see streaks of dirt over his cheekbones. And freckles. Lots of freckles.

But before she'd even had a chance to process his words, he'd grabbed her arm and twisted it, forcing her to lose her grip on the sword, and then with one quick movement of his foot, he knocked her legs out from under her, leaving her to slam onto the ground. He stood above her, lips pulled up at the corners, her own sword pointed at her neck.

She raised her arms in surrender. As if there'd ever even been a fight.

"Like I said," he crouched down next to her. "Dead before you could even land a blow."

She sat herself up and shoved him away from her, watching with pleasure as he momentarily lost his balance, slipping backwards before landing on the arm he had thrown out to catch him. She stood up and brushed herself off.

"Fine," she said. "You've made your point. Are you finished?"

He was just shaking his head smiling. "What's your name?"

Clarke froze.

"What's it to you?" she asked instead of answering.

"Just being friendly. How about I go first? My name is Bellamy." He bowed, mockingly, from his position on the dirt, dipping his head comically low to the ground and she had to fight the urge not to push on his back to close the remaining distance between him and the ground.

She sighed. "Griff. My name is Griff."

He pulled himself up to tower over her once again. She watched as his fingers shook off the dirt from his trousers, scattering it back on the ground below. He was taking his time, walking around her in circles, taking her appearance in one inch at a time, deciding whether or not he actually believed her.

He didn't, of course. Clarke had never been a very good liar.

"That your given name?"

"It's the only name you're getting," she said back, reaching down to grab the sword, but his hand stopped her movement.

"Wait a minute," he said grabbing her wrist with one hand, and the sword with the other. He held it off at his side, out of her reach. "Rule number one, no touching the sword until you learn how to stand."

Clarke looked at him perplexed. He hadn't let go of her wrist, but his grip wasn't tight and she could have shaken him loose if she needed to. His other hand was waving the sword back and forth, as if to tempt her, and she couldn't figure out exactly where this game was going.

"Excuse me?" she said.

"I can teach you."

Well. That she _hadn't_ been expecting.

Clarke looked down at her blistered hands and felt her sore muscles blanketing her frame. She felt the memory of the previous days sweat drip down her back and the sigh of relief her shoulders seemed to give when she laid down on her mattress every night. She thought of how her body was aching and she still couldn't hold a sword with one hand and strike. She thought of how she still felt like an old wooden stick was the weapon best suited to her, and how her father would bring her into the armory and talk about how someday he was going to make her a sword of her own, and she was going to hold it better than any knight, fight truer than any king. She imagined what she must look like now, not even able to beat a sack of straw.

He took her silence as something else.

"Or I could turn you in," he said simply. "Your choice."

Clarke held out her hand for the sword. "Teach me."

If Clarke thought her muscles were aching before, it was nothing compared to how she felt after one practice session with Bellamy.

The first hour, he didn't even let her touch the sword.

He plunged it into the grass a few feet away from her and pointed at it. "I don't think you understand what that is," he said.

She rolled her eyes. Perfect. She'd gotten a philosopher as a coach.

"It's a sword," she said flatly.

"It's a weapon." He stood between her and the sword. "Have you thought about what that means?"

"It means," she said sighing. "That once I can use it, I can make sure you never bother me with ridiculous questions like this, ever again."

"It means you're going to use it to kill someone."

He wasn't smiling anymore. He face was completely stony, but his eyes were wide and boring into hers, almost pleading, and she wondered for a moment exactly what this man had done and why he was a knight.

"You understand that right?" All the condescension was gone from his tone.

The image of a carriage rolling up to the castle gates, a blanket over the still figure inside, popped up at the front of Clarke's mind.

"Yes," she said. "I understand that."

He nodded. "Good. Okay. Let's begin."

Clarke straightened her shoulders and moved toward the sword, only to once again feel his fingers wrap themselves along her wrist.

"Not yet," he said.

Clarke rolled her eyes and pulled her hand away. At the pace this was going, she was never going to learn to fight. She should have just stayed in her room. She should have asked her mother for lessons (for the fifth time) or asked Wells to teach her. Wells had been training for years, he could have taught her.

She pictured that and snorted. Yeah right.

"Seriously?" she asked him. "What are we going to do? Mime it? Practice with sticks?"

Bellamy ignored her question. He walked back over to the straw filled dummy and stood behind it, resting his arms on top of it, watching her. She turned around to face him and waited.

"Do you know why you barely made a mark on this?"

"Because every time I tried to practice, some arrogant knight kept interrupting me?"

"Because your form was terrible." He picked up a couple sticks on the ground and tossed one to her. Suddenly she felt as if she was eight years old, running around, chasing her father around the courtyard, not eighteen learning to use a sword to fight. She opened her mouth to protest but he held up a hand. "Just shut up for a minute, and let me explain." She snapped her jaw shut. "Stand like you were before, like you were when you were practicing."

She turned to face the dummy head on, her arm out to her side, the stick slanted slightly in front of her chest.

"If you stand like that in a fight, you're going to get yourself killed," he said. Bellamy walked over to her until he was standing just in front of her. "Your balance for one thing," he said and then he shoved at her shoulder, causing her to stumble back. "If you can't maintain your center, you won't be able to control the sword. You're going to be falling all over yourself just trying to stand up straight. Plus," he said, poking her in the stomach with his own stick. "You're leaving yourself wide open. Two moves and your opponent will be standing over your body on the ground."

She took in his own posture. His legs were further apart than her own, so she shuffled her feet until they lined up with her shoulders. She looked at his torso and saw that it wasn't perfectly aligned with his hips, he was twisted a bit, his arm shielding his belly, so she twisted her own.

"Good," he said. "That's better. You might actually stay on your feet for more than a few seconds if you stand like that." He set his stick down by his feet and wandered behind her. She felt his hands on her shoulders, tugging them back the tiniest bit.

"Don't hunch over so much," he said softly as he adjusted her shoulders. He pressed a hand into her lower back, straightening her up further. "Your movements will be less sloppy if you aren't curled in on yourself."

Then he wandered next to her and crouched down by your legs. He tapped her right leg. "Your leading foot needs to be in front of your other just a bit," he said. She shuffled her foot forward across the grass. His hands gripped her foot, readjusting it when she stepped too far. "There, like that," he said. His hands ran along the back of her calves and she forced herself to stay standing upright, just like he showed her, and ignored the startling sensation of his fingers along her leg. When he got to her knee, he pushed in a little. She glanced down at him.

"Don't lock your knees," he explained. "Bend them a little. Not too much," he corrected when she began to crouch midair. "Just enough to free yourself up for some movement. It'll help keep you balanced."

He stood up and walked backward a few steps to take in her stance. The smile was back. "Now you look like you could stand a chance," he said.

He stepped forward and shoved her shoulder once more. She only swayed a bit at his touch, instead of crumbling to the ground like she did before.

"Not bad, Griff." He picked up his stick again and mirrored her stance. "We'll make a knight out of you yet."

It went on like that for a week. She hardly even touched the sword, and when she did, he almost immediately ripped it out of her hand to correct her form before giving it back.

"Stop gripping the hilt so tight," Bellamy said as he pulled her hand into his. His rubbed on her knuckles until she loosened her grip a bit.

"I'm going to drop it," she said.

"No," he said. "You're not. You're going to tire out too quickly if you hold it so tight. And," he added, pulling her fingers from the hilt completely. "You're going to make the blisters worse." He ran a thumb over her palm, barely grazing the tender skin of her hand, but she pulled it back, hissing in pain none the less.

"I think we should be done for today," he said, sticking his own sword in the ground.

"I need to practice," Clarke protested. She bent down and picked her own sword up off the ground, forcing herself to loosen her grip, and she stood tall, blade at the ready, waiting for him.

"Put it down, Griff," he said. "We're done."

Clarke slammed her sword on the patch of dirt in front of her feet. All week he'd been doing this. One step forward, two steps back. He taught her the posture, he taught her to steady her breathing, he taught her how to hold a sword. But she'd barely gotten to swing one.

"I'm never going to learn to fight at this rate," she grumbled.

" _Fighting_ ," he said, a hint of amusement in his voice. "Is not the problem. You've fought me plenty." He walked over to where her satchel sat on the ledge of a window in the armory. He pulled out Monty's salve and sat down, waving her over. She leaned back against the cool stone next to him, and he removed the cap and grabbed her hands.

"Look," he said. He dipped his fingers into the salve and pressed them into the palm of her right hand, swirling them around, back and forth and back and forth. "You've got spirit, and that's great. You need that in a fight. But there's no enemy at your door right now. And I'd prefer to teach you slowly so that when there is, you don't get yourself killed because you made a dumb mistake."

His thumb pressed into her skin, drawing circles in her hand, and she knew it was the salve that was relieving the tension, she knew it was the salve causing heat to spread from the palm of her hand to the tips of her ears, but even so she felt a bit of it missing when he pulled his hand away to scoop out more for her other hand.

"Where did you learn to fight?" she asked quietly.

Bellamy pulled back. He did that a lot when she asked him about his life before he became a knight. The only thing she really knew about him was that he loved apples and that he liked to read.

"All over the lower towns, actually," he said. He glanced up at her out of the corner of his eye. "Me and a bunch of other street rats learned pretty quickly that we weren't going to last long doing whatever the hell we wanted if we didn't have the skills to back it up."

"Figures you'd be trouble even as a kid," she joked. His smile spread across his face.

"Who says I was the one causing trouble?"

Clarke just rolled her eyes and held out her other hand. His hands wrapped around it and pulled her closer to him for a moment, keeping still, just holding her there, but then the moment was up and he was spreading the balm over her skin forwards and backwards and side to side, both thumbs massaging it deep into her palm. She let her head fall back against the wall and she closed her eyes and sighed.

When he finished, he put the top of the jar back on and slipped it back into her satchel which he then handed to her.

"Get some sleep, Griff," he said pulling the strap of her bag onto her shoulder. "Maybe I'll let you actually swing the sword tomorrow."

"How are you a knight if you grew up in the lower towns?" she asked, sticking the tip of her sword into a patch of mossy grass. Bellamy straightened up, brows furrowed as he studied her.

"What?" he said.

"You said you learned to fight in the lower towns," she reminded him. "You called yourself a street rat."

It didn't make sense. She hadn't given it a second thought when he'd told her, hadn't even realized that it didn't make sense until she'd gotten back into her rooms. She'd been lying on her bed, his words ringing around in her ears when she thought of it. Only nobles became knights. No one from the lower towns had ever been a part of the castle guard.

He picked up his sword and swung a few times against the dummy.

"I said I learned in the lower towns," he said eventually. "I didn't say I lived there."

She studied the way his feet moved, soft and quick. She'd tried to mimic his movements just minutes before and had found herself falling backwards on her ass as she tripped over her own feet. But he moved smooth, like a cat.

"So you didn't live in the lower towns then?" she asked.

He dropped his sword and turned to her, an exasperated look on his face. "Couldn't be a knight if I did, could I?"

She shrugged, nodding a bit when she met his eye and didn't point out that he still wasn't really answering the question.

"Okay," he said, voice loud. He was going to change the subject, so she stood up and brushed her legs off, preparing. "Pick up your sword."

She did and he held his own in front of him. His eyebrows quirked up as he smiled at her.

"Ready for your first spar?"

Clarke couldn't remember what it felt like _not_ to be sore.

Wells had begun teasing her about it; getting people to ask her to run back and forth all over the castle before she realized that _no_ , her mother didn't need to see her-usually she figured it out whenever she heard snickering from behind a corner, and saw Wells and Monty duck in behind it as if she hadn't seen them.

She could tell her mother was curious, certain she knew that something was going on, but unsure of exactly what. And Clarke knew her mother, until she had something to go on, she wasn't about to ask her about it. Clarke just had to make sure Wells or Monty wouldn't let anything slip.

Other than that, she'd just have to be careful not to be too obvious about it.

She eased herself down onto her mattress, ever grateful for Monty's salve as she worked it into her thighs and her calves, then her arms. Bellamy always took a few minutes at the end of every lesson to help her work it into her palms, to help her prevent blisters he said, and she hid how sore the rest of her body was until she got back to her chambers and collapsed on her bed. She wished she was flexible enough to work it into her back, but after a few minutes of struggling she gave up and flopped back onto her mattress.

It was the only time she ever really got to talk to him, she realized, in those last few minutes outside the armory, his hands working in circles over her own.

Any other time she'd ask him something, try to learn anything about his life outside the castle, where he'd grown up, what his family was like, he'd swing his sword against the dummy before telling her to get ready to spar. She was aching from head to toe because he'd rather work her bones into dust than tell her his mother's name.

But the five minutes he took at the end, he'd usually let something slip. Like that he still got lost in the castle sometimes, or that he loved to read but only had one book of his own, or that he actually hated the taste of mead but drank it anyway.

Then she'd linger and he'd wander off, back to the rest of his patrol, and he'd throw a smile and a wave over his shoulder as he walked away.

"Cook me something good in the kitchens tomorrow!" he'd tease as he backed away from her. "Gotta pay me somehow, right?"

Clarke woke to bells ringing around the citadel.

She jolted up in her bed, startled awake from her dream, and recognized the alarm as it ran through the tower. She heard footsteps running through the hall, pounding outside her door. And shouts—broken off, bits of phrases, echoing down the stone hallway, too panicked for her to understand, but loud enough for her to get the picture.

She ran to her window.

There was fire. Just in the distance, she saw flames flickering. The lower towns, it must have been. She couldn't tell what else was happening, all she saw were figures running outside her window, all she heard were shouts and screams, and the banging of metal as knights ran back and forth, as swords were held, and shields were bumped and armor scraped against armor.

She jumped at a banging on her door.

Wells slipped in. "Clarke!" he shouted. He was pulling clothes out of her wardrobe. The same clothes she wore every night to the armory. He ran towards her and shoved them into her hands.

"Put these on. Find your mother. Get to the lower rooms, stay there until I come to get you." He looked at her, waiting for her to nod, to answer, to say something but everything was happening and Wells was standing in front of her with a look she'd never seen on his face, and she couldn't put any of it together, she couldn't understand what was happening. "Clarke!"

She startled out of her daze. "What's happening?"

Wells shook his head. "I don't know, I don't know. I heard the alarm and I came right here. I'm finding Monty next. You'll do what I said?" she just stared at him. "Clarke! You'll find your mother?"

Clarke nodded dumbly. _What is my mother going to do_? She wondered. _What would I do If I were queen?_

Wells pulled a dagger from his belt. He pressed it into her palm. "You shouldn't be unarmed," he said. "I know it's not a sword, but you can do some damage with it."

 _I would fight_ , she thought. _I would fight if I were queen_.

"Hey," Wells drew her face up to look at him. "Don't worry, Clarkey. I got this." He pulled her into a hug, and dropped a kiss to the top of her head, before shoving at the clothes once more. He was pulling the doors to her chambers back open, when he turned and shouted over his shoulder at her.

"Don't do anything stupid!"

She pressed herself into the wall on the side of the armory.

Shouts. All she could hear were shouts. And footsteps, pounding in and out of the armory as knights ran in and gathered shields and swords and ran out again. She pulled her cap tighter, down around her head.

As the footsteps died down she inched her way closer the the door, about to slip in when she felt a hand wrap itself around her arm and yank her backwards. She pulled the knife out from her sleeve and pressed it forward, into the neck of the man standing opposite her before she even saw who it was.

"What the hell are you doing Griff?" Bellamy hissed at her.

She pulled herself out of his grasp and shoved the knife back into it's hiding spot, adjusting her tunic back in it's place.

"Getting a sword," she said. "Being useful."

"No," Bellamy shook his head. "Not this time." She opened her mouth to protest but he cut her off. "You're not ready. You'll do more harm than good."

His hand was wrapped back around her arm and he was pulling her into a back corridor, weaving his way through the halls of the castle.

"Thought you still got lost in here,"she huffed.

Bellamy pushed open a door to a small room she'd never even known existed. He shoved her shoulder until she was inside. He gripped her shoulders.

"Griff," he said. For the first time since she'd met him, his voice wasn't masking anything, it wasn't low or smirking or blank. He was nervous. "You don't leave this room. Got it? You stay here. I'll come find you later. Keep the knife out just in case."

He had smears of soot all along his face and across his knuckles. She hadn't noticed at the armory, but his under tunic was smudged too, burned it even looked like at the hem.

"What happened-where did you-"

He shook his head.

"Look next time I'm sure you'll be ready and you can grab a sword and sneak off and help everyone but right now, you're staying here. Okay?"

She shoved his hands off of her shoulders and nodded.

"Fine," she agreed. She knew he was right. She could barely walk and swing at the same time, she wasn't ready to take a sword out of the practice field. But no one would tell her what was happening and all she could hear were the shouts and the footsteps, running, pounding in every direction, and the bells, still ringing and ringing and ringing.

He nodded curtly, pulling himself back up away from her.

"I'll be back," he said, and he closed the door.

She hadn't seen Bellamy since the attack on the lower towns.

She'd waited until she was sure he was gone and she'd slipped out of the room and went to find her mother like Wells had told her to do, knuckles gripped tightly around the dagger the whole time.

But even when it all settled down, when the fires were put out and the bells had stopped ringing and the shouts had stopped, she hadn't dared go back to the armory. She didn't want to, not until she knew what was going on.

When her mother had called her to the throne room only two days after the attacks, she thought that maybe, finally, somebody was going to tell her everything they'd been keeping from her.

But she walked in to see Bellamy, standing ten feet off from where her mother and Thelonious sat at a table, pouring over letters and maps. His eyes were wide and confused and she ducked her head as she saw them rake up and down her body, taking in her dress where there should have been ratty trousers, watching her hair fall over her shoulders when it should have been tucked into a cap.

"Griff-?" he'd started, but at his voice her mother looked up.

"Clarke," she said standing. "Good, come here," she held out her hand. Clarke took it but there was suddenly a ringing in her ears that she couldn't explain and she couldn't hear anything Abby was saying. All she could hear was the ringing and all she could feel was the flush working it's way up her neck, bleeding into her cheeks and all she could see was the way Bellamy's eyes hardened as the pieces finally came together for him.

"-Sir Bellamy, at all times. After the other night we can't be too careful and I want someone at your side always." She paused expecting Clarke to protest, but Clarke merely blinked dumbly up at her.

"There's not going to be an argument about this, Clarke," she warned. "I'm not taking any risks, not with you."

Clarke nodded, still not meeting her eye, and she peeked over at where Bellamy stood, facing the opposite wall, avoiding her gaze.

"If that's it," Clarke said weakly. "I've got a bit of a headache and I'd like to return to my rooms."

Abby nodded and Clarke turned to go.

"I guess you're coming with me then, Sir Bellamy," she said.

He nodded, eyes trained just above her head.

"After you, your Highness," he said.

She turned from her mother and walked out into the hall, waiting to hear the door close and Bellamy's steady footsteps behind her. Once they were down the corridor and around the corner, she turned to face him.

"I can explain-" she started, steps coming to a stop beside him, but he kept walking.

"No need to explain yourself to me, princess," he said bitterly and she felt a small weight press itself into her ribs. She swallowed thickly and jogged to catch up to him, ignoring the ache in her muscles as she moved.


	2. Chapter 2

_She was good._

 _Bellamy wasn't going to pretend otherwise. She was a quick learner and she had spirit. She wasn't battlefield ready or anything, but hopefully it wouldn't come to that._

 _He watched in awe as she swatted the sweat dripping down her forehead with her arm, and bit down the grimace and the groan because she didn't want him to think she was weak. He watched as she pushed herself up again, held her sword out in front of her and looked him in the eye._

 _"Again."_

 _Her breathing was labored but the word came out a stone, steady, full and strong. He quirked an eyebrow, asking her if she was really sure, giving her an out before he raised his sword, but she just glared at him._

 _"Come on," she said. "Again."_

 _He didn't even try to swallow his grin._

 _When they'd finished for the night, she stood in front of him, clothes soaked through with sweat, and covered in dirt. Her hair was trickling out of the cap-the cap he knew was meant to make her look like a boy-and she had smudges all across her cheeks and nose. She could barely speak for exhaustion, but glancing over at her as he sheathed his sword, he saw the smallest hint of a smile working its way up from the corner of her mouth._

 _"Here," he said stepping forward. "You're a wreck."_

 _She frowned at him but froze when he reached his hands up to her head, one resting at the back holding her in place, while the other dragged along from forehead to ear, tucking in the loose strands. He brought his hand to meet the other at the back of her neck, slipping his fingers into her cap with the remaining strands._

 _He swept a hand from the top of her spine up, making sure he got them all._

 _When he stepped away, she was looking at him with wide confused eyes._

 _"Your, uh," he stuttered. "Your disguise. You're meant to be a boy right?"_

" _Oh," she said, nodding. Her hands came up from her sides to run along her hairline self consciously, and then landed on the top of her cap with a flop. "Yeah." She seemed to realize that her hands were resting on her head, her elbows jutting out on either side, so she sighed and let her arms fall back down to her sides one at a time._

 _He watched as her eyes trail down to his hands, hanging limply at his own sides. She stared at them for a moment before looking back to him._

" _I have more of that salve," she said, reaching for one of his hands. "You've got bruises and scrapes all over."_

" _Comes with the job," he smirked down at her._

 _She dropped his hand, glaring up at him. There was no fire behind her eyes though, and the small smile was slipping back._

" _Come on then," he said. He nodded to the wall and sat down on the ledge, holding his hands out expectantly as she unstoppered the jar and slid in next to him._

" _Not sure if I've said it properly yet," Griff said, swirling the salve from her fingers to his palm, then pushing it around his skin with her thumb. "But thanks. For teaching me."_

 _He looked down at her ratty breeches and her thin worn shirt and shook his head. "Everyone should know how to protect themselves," he shrugged._

" _You should tell my mother that," she teased._

" _Alright," he said laughing. "Bring me to her and I'll set her straight. She's got to listen to a knight, right?"_

He didn't want to hear it. He didn't care. It didn't matter.

"Why won't you let me explain?" she said, tugging on his arm before he opened the door to her chambers for her.

He stepped back, his arm slipping out of her grip and looked down at her for a moment before quickly looking away, focusing on a spot on the wall just behind her.

"Like I said," he focused in on the dozens of tiny cracks and marks on the stone wall, ignoring the pleading look she was giving him. "There's nothing to explain."

There wasn't. There wasn't anything to explain. She was the princess. She'd put on a costume, and given him a fake name, because what else was the princess going to do?

So what was with the tugging on his ribs, the rope wrapped around them scratching and pulling every time she took a step closer?

"You're mad," she said. "I get it, and I'm sorry, I'm sorry I lied, but if you would just listen-"

Bellamy's face hardened and he looked down at her, crossing his arms over his chest. She was frowning at him, maybe mad, maybe hurt, but it didn't matter. It didn't matter because that was what happened when you lied to people. When you made things up. People got mad and people got hurt and it didn't matter who or why, it's just what happened. And explaining why you did it, why you did something to make them mad or cause them hurt doesn't make the anger or the pain go away.

"If I would _just listen_ , I'd hear you telling me some stupid excuse about how you're the princess so you had to disguise yourself, about how you didn't have anyone to turn to-which isn't true by the way, you royalty seem to think your position alienates you, but you've all got someone-and that you didn't _want_ to lie to me, but you didn't know how to tell me the truth, and that it all just _happened so fast_." He raised an eyebrow at her.

She bit her lip, her eyes narrowing, but she didn't say anything.

"Am I right?" he asked.

She pushed past him into her chambers. He followed her in, his face hot, and the anger finally spilling over. He knew he should have stayed behind, just outside the door where he was supposed to be, he should have kept his mouth shut and left it at that, but the words were rolling through him now and he wasn't going to try to stop them.

"What you won't say if I would _just listen_ ," he spat. "Is that you weren't actually thinking about any of that. You were thinking of how you could get what you wanted, forget the rest and damn the consequences."

"That's not true," she whispered. She was facing the wall, her back to him. He could see how tense she was, shoulders tight, fists clenched at her sides and he wished he could take some sort of grim satisfaction from it, but all he felt was tired.

"You can stop lying now princess, the game is up."

She turned to face him.

"Fine," she said. "You want to play it that way? _Fine_." She stood up a little straighter and looked a little to his left, like he wasn't even worth a glance. "Go out in the hall, Sir Bellamy. You're no longer needed in here. I'll let you know when you can escort me to dinner."

She cringed at the slam of the door.

A million things were running through her mind, but she couldn't focus on any of them. She needed a minute. She needed air. She needed...perspective.

She shot a glance to the door, considering for a moment. But then she pictured the stony face and the coiled back leaning up against the door and she shook her head. She wouldn't be long.

She grabbed the pair of trousers from her wardrobe and slipped off her dress, pulling them and a tunic on quickly. She didn't feel like wasting time pinning her hair up under a cap, so she yanked her cloak out from where it sat crumpled at the bottom and pulled the hood over her hair.

She winced as her window creaked when she pushed it open and she slowed it, waiting for the inevitable bang of the door when Bellamy shoved it open and barged in, but it never came. Not taking her eyes off the door, she pushed it further, until it was open enough for her to squeeze through.

One more glance at the door, and she took a breath and climbed out.

 _Two Weeks Later_

Monty's arm shot out to grab her's as his leg slipped out in front of him, from where his boot landed in mud.

"This," he said. "Is disgusting."

Clarke rolled her eyes and wrapped her fingers around his arm, hoisting it up. It had been Monty's idea to sneak down to the lower towns. They'd been sneaking through windows, slipping past guards, wrapping themselves up in disguises the past two weeks. Usually they waited until nightfall, sneaking into the kitchens to pilfer out baskets of breads and meats, bringing parcels of their old worn out clothes as well.

The lower towns were scrambling, recovering slowly, if at all, from the attack from the Forest Clan a fortnight before. Houses had been burned and hacked, homes had been raided, townsfolk had been injured and left starving.

Without training, Clarke was suddenly left with an altered sleeping schedule and nothing to fill it with. In the past two weeks, she'd barely gotten Bellamy to look her in the eye, and any attempts she made at talking to him were answered in one or two words, or a simple grunt.

She went to Wells at first, asking him to tell her about the attack, who it came from and what it meant for them, for the Forest Clan, or the people of the lower towns. He hadn't given her much, just that the Forest Clan attacked again, and the lower towns didn't have enough resources to protect themselves or counter it. The knights didn't get there in time to stop enough of the damage but they were able to push them back, out of the city.

Then he was swept off by his father and she hadn't been able to catch more than five minutes alone with him since.

It just didn't add up to Clarke, when she thought about it. The Forest Clan was big, and their fighters were strong, but they were massively outnumbered by knights in the City Watch. A mere handful of their knights could overpower them, and they knew it from their own history. It didn't make sense for them to attack knowing that, and it made even less sense that they would plant their attack on the lower towns, the poor people of the city, that they could gain nothing from.

Somebody wasn't telling her something, and she was going to find out what it was.

"Relax," she said to Monty. "it's just mud."

"That was not just mud." He was scraping his shoe against the stone of the wall next to them, his nose scrunched up. Clarke couldn't help but laugh.

She was glad Monty was just as eager to help out the townspeople as she was. She didn't want to say it, but she was afraid to go alone. Not that the people scared her, because they didn't. They were good, hardworking people, far more likely to lend a hand when they had none to give than hurt a stranger, but she'd never been out of the castle on her own. She was always followed, always escorted, always told what to say and who to say it to. It was uncharted territory. It felt more natural with Monty.

And, with Monty as the physician's apprentice, they were able to bring medicines and poultices down to the people, leaving them much more likely to welcome the two strangers into their homes without questions.

She clapped him on the shoulder. "Come on," she said. "Harper's waiting."

Harper, a baker from the lower towns, had taken to meeting them each night, a few blocks down from the gates of the citadel. She'd caught them sneaking around their first night in the towns, before they knew where to go or what to do, and she hadn't believed them when they said they were just there to help.

"Most people who come down here, sneaking behind our homes and climbing through our window panes don't usually have our best interests in mind," she'd said. "So you'll forgive me if I don't believe you."

It hadn't helped that they'd been wearing old clothes from the palace-worn out, threadbare and dirty ones, but palace clothes-people from the lower towns, while most weren't openly rebellious, they didn't have any particular fondness for anyone from the castle.

Harper, however ridiculous it sounded, seemed to be the the information center of the lower towns. She knew everything that went on, she saw everyone who passed through. So she was the first to know about who they really were. Luckily, for them, she decided they weren't lying and she agreed to help them. They started sneaking down to the towns, meeting her around the corner from her shop, then following her in when she gave the signal. She'd take their money and their food and clothes and medicine, give it to her women, and they would distribute it to who needed it most that night. In exchange, she'd tell them everything she knew.

Usually it wasn't much. Rumors spread hot and wild in the towns, rumors of men from the mountains moving in, or Clans combining, forming alliances, things like that. She never had any proof of any of it, and it never really helped Clarke much, but it was better than being shuffled out of rooms in the palace starving for information about her own kingdom. She had plenty of food to give, and maybe one day there'd be something useful to her. Until then she was fine helping the towns, just to help them.

Clarke watched as the light from the shop next to Harper's bakery blew out, and she tapped Monty on the shoulder. He stopped messing with his boot and stood up, walking quietly through the street, lugging the baskets of food between them.

Shuffling them in, Harper stood at the door, watching for anyone who may have seen them, locking it quickly behind them.

"Welcome, Highness," she said, pulling chairs out for them. "What do you have for us today?"

"Same as always," Monty answered. hoisting his half of the haul onto the wooden counter along the back wall of the shop.

Harper nodded at them, flipping the rags off the top of the baskets and dividing it all up into piles. The sorted piles were given to her shopmates, Monroe, Roma, and Fox, who did the bulk of the deliveries. They'd insisted at first, making sure Clarke wasn't just there to make herself look good, but when she returned day after day, and they'd offered to let her make the deliveries, she and Monty insisted that it should just be done as quickly and efficiently as possible. They weren't there to campaign.

"Good," Harper said, satisfied, once she'd reviewed the lot. "I've got something new for you."

 _4 Days Earlier_

"I think I should be trained," Clarke said to her mother at dinner. "With a sword."

She heard a slight scoff coming from behind her, but she didn't spare Bellamy a glance. It'd been more than a week since he'd been assigned to watch over her every waking moment, so it'd been more than a week since she'd even touched a sword.

"Clarke-" her mother began but Clarke cut her off.

"Please, allow me this one thing." She set her goblet on the table in front of her, turning to face her mother fully. "You have me followed like a child, a guard trailing behind me wherever I go, whenever I go there, leaving me absolutely no privacy whatsoever. And I understand why. And I won't ask you to remove him, because I know it comforts you to have someone looking out for my safety."

She wasn't sure how intently Bellamy watched out for her, or how loyal he was to the cause, but in her mother's eyes, he was there, to watch over her all hours of the day. Her shadow. And she'd be foolish to tell her mother anything else.

"But imagine," she carried on. "That something did happen. That, heaven forbid, someone did try to attack me, and Sir Bellamy was injured doing his duty, leaving me without a guard or an ally, nor any skill with a blade, in the midst of an attack on my safety?"

Abby sat, her goblet in hand, in front of her nose for a long moment. She took a long sip, considering, but when she placed her cup on the table, she still gave no answer.

"I'm not asking you to fit me with armour and send me into battle," Clarke sighed. "But I don't want to be the only one in the castle who has to rely on someone else to protect themselves."

Her mother pursed her lips.

"Sir Bellamy," Abby called out.

Bellamy stepped forward. "Yes, Your Grace."

She slid her chair back, the thick wooden legs scraping across the stone floor. She stood, folding her hands in front of her, circling Bellamy.

"How long have you been trained with a sword, Sir Bellamy?"

He hesitated, straightening himself up. "Since I was a boy, Your Grace."

"It must come very naturally to you know, for knowing the craft so long. You would be skilled enough to teach my daughter then, I believe. Sir Bellamy-"

"No." Clarke cut her off, standing abruptly. Her mother looked startled, confused at her outburst. "I mean, uh, I think Sir Bellamy has enough duties, don't you? He's supposed to be my guard, constantly looking out for my safety. He can't really do that, if he's the one sparring with me, can he?"

It was a weak excuse, but Clarke didn't think she could go down that road with him again. It was partly her stupid pride, standing in the way of her being able to admit that she should have told him who she was-despite the position it would have put her in-and partly her refusal to admit what those training sessions really were, what Bellamy really was during those nights. Standing in the middle of the practice field, surrounded by knights watching them as they practiced, formally, as he refused to talk to her as an equal, would be too much for her to bear.

"Alright," her mother said. "I'll speak with Thelonious, and we'll make the arrangements."

Abby left Bellamy's side, and made her way to the doors, done with the food on her plate. As a guard reached to open them, Clarke called out to stop her.

"Mother," she said. Anny turned to look at her, curious. "Thank you."

A hint of a smile made it's way onto Abby's face, and she gave a nod of her head. "Of course dear. You know all I care about is your safety."

With that, she walked out of the room, the guards, all but Bellamy, following her out of the room and closing the doors behind them. The thudding of the doors slamming into place echoed around the hall, bouncing between Clarke and Bellamy.

Still not speaking to her, Bellamy stepped back into his original position, away from the table. Clarke glanced over her shoulder at him.

"There's plenty of food," she said, hoping to bridge the gap between them a bit. "No sense in wasting it. Sit down, have some."

A derisive snort came from behind her.

"What?" She was losing her temper with him. Over a week he'd been like that. Grunting and nodding and snorting, rolling his eyes when he thought she wasn't looking-or maybe he didn't care if she was looking or not-refusing to look her in the eye, refusing to let her speak to him for more than a minute at a time. She'd had enough.

"I'm not good enough to train you-out in the daylight where you don't have to hide and lie, of course-but I can eat your mother's dinner scraps, is that it, Your Highness?"

Clarke stabbed her food with her fork, tearing into it far more aggressively than she needed to.

"Don't call me that."

It sounded sour on his tongue. Like it was a cruel joke that only he was in on, meant to make her feel bad, and put her down each time he said it, but she couldn't fight back because really, she wasn't the one who was put down by her title.

He made no move to sit at the table with her, so she turned around.

"Fine," she said. "Starve."

 _Four Days Later_

The something new Harper had for her and Monty was another townsman.

"This is Finn," she said to them, as he stepped out from the back. His hair was long, to his shoulders, falling in big waves. He came out to them smiling, swaggering over to them as Harper introduced them. "Finn Collins. He's a big part of our eyes and ears in the towns, and he's one of the only townsfolk who travels out to the Forest Clans, so he's our big source for what's going on out there."

He held his hand out to Monty, shaking it, Finn repeating his name, and Monty introducing himself. Then he stepped over to Clarke and gave her a smile before dipping into a bow.

"Your Highness" he said, as he stood, grabbing her hand and pressing a kiss into it.

"Okay," she said. "No need for that." A blush crept up her neck though, and she wiped her hand on the side of her trousers, trying to get rid of the queasy feeling, squirming around in her gut.

"He lives on the border of the city," Harper continued. "Right on the edge of the towns. He makes a lot of trades with the Forest folks. Knows them pretty well, trusts them too, though we all think he's cracked for it."

Finn shrugs, keeping his eyes and his smile on Clarke. "A guy can dream for peace, right?"

Clarke crossed her arms in front of her chest. "We're not at war now, Mr. Collins."

He raised his eyebrows at her, nodding over to their baskets. "What happened two weeks ago, then, Clarke, if not an act of war?"

The back of Clarke's neck prickled. He wasn't trying to goad her, but that didn't stop her from feeling attacked, and patronized to boot.

"One raid doesn't make a war." She felt Monty squeeze her forearm in warning. "It's not as if the Queen is going off and sending armies into the woods in retaliation for what the Forest Clans did."

Finn's hands were up, but his smile was still plastered to his face. He was backing down, turning to Harper to discuss whatever it was they normally talked about without Clarke and Monty around. She couldn't tell if it was a dismissal, or not, but suddenly she didn't want to stick around for whatever it was Finn was there to do. She walked over to their now empty baskets, threw the rags that had been covering the food in them, and thrust half of them at Monty while she grabbed the other half.

"Come on," she said. "I'm sure not much has changed since yesterday, we can get information when we come back tomorrow."

She pushed her way out of the shop, Monty trailing behind her. She was overreacting. Probably. But she didn't care. She didn't come down to the towns far fetched rumors about wars that didn't exist. She knew there were tensions between the Forest Clans and the city, she knew that much about her own city, she didn't need some snarky tradesman telling her that. And she certainly didn't need him laughing at her.

"He could help," Monty said softly. "If he's the only one with a relationship to the Clans. He could get us information we don't have."

"Information for what, Monty?" The ridiculousness of it all was collapsing in on her. She'd been filling time. Trying to do something, trying to rebel. Trying to be an actual person instead of a piece shifted from room to room whenever someone instructed her to be moved. "What information are we looking for? What are we going to do with it? What are _we_ going to do with it?"

A healer's apprentice and an ansty princess with a penchant for secrets. That's all they were. She didn't need Finn Collins to make her feel bad about it either.

"We're going to know what's going on," he said. "Knowing is always better than not knowing. And these past two weeks that we've been coming here is the first time anyone-apart from Wells, who doesn't get told everything himself-has told us anything in months."

He was right, she knew he was right. She couldn't very well expect to be a good princess if she didn't know what was going on in her own kingdom. Finn had just irked her, gotten under her skin.

"You're right. I know you're right."

Minty shrugged, popping a some berries he nicked from Harper into his mouth. "That's because I'm always right, Clarke. I don't know why you aren't more used to it by now."

She was back in her room, safely squeezed through the window, changed back out of her hat and trousers in case anyone came knocking on her door, when she heard a tap on her window. Curious, she walked over and pulled the fabric out of the way.

A hesitant smile greeted her on the other side.

"You could be arrested for this, you know," she said, as she yanked the window open and pulled him inside. "There are guards right outside my door."

"I know, I know," Finn said, holding his hands up _again_. "I'm just here to apologize."

"How did you even find my window?"

"I think we got off on the wrong foot earlier." He held his hand out. "I'd like to be friends. Harper's told me a lot about you and I've been asking to meet you for days. I really admire what you're doing, you and Monty."

She felt the prickle of anger in her chest smooth itself down a little bit. Maybe she had been too quick to rush to judgement before.

"Well," she said. "Thank you."

Finn laughed, deep and full and she couldn't help but smile back.

"It'll get less uncomfortable the more we get to know each other, but we're on the same team, I think, Clarke. Sometimes in a kingdom this big it's hard to know who your allies are."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "I thought you were allies with everyone."

"Well," he said, stepping closer. "I certainly try to be. Nothing wrong with that, right Your Highness?"

Clarke shoved him playfully. She felt a wave of relief wash over her. In part because she had someone new to joke with again, and with Wells so busy and Monty training more in his apprenticeship, and Bellamy being, well, what he was, she was running low on people she could laugh with. It was nice.

He stumbled back a bit from her shove, far more dramatic than he needed to be, aiming to pull a laugh from her. He tumbled back into the table though, and then nearly lost his balance and had to grip onto a chair, which he nearly brought tumbling down, in order to stay upright himself.

She heard a knock on her door.

"Clarke?" It was Bellamy's voice. "Everything alright in there?"

Finn raised an eyebrow at her. "Suitor?" he asked.

She flushed at the thought. She ducked her head so maybe he wouldn't see the red creeping up her neck. Because it was ridiculous. Bellamy, the man who hated being in the same room as her-hell he probably hated being this close to her even separated by a door-her suitor.

She rolled her eyes to cover up her burning face and chest. "Guard."

The door clicked open before Finn could answer though, and Bellamy, not quite urgently burst in.

"Am I hearing voices-" he was saying and then his eyes landed on Finn. "Who the hell is this?"

"He's-" Clarke cut off, without the first clue of how to explain it.

"Leaving, actually" Finn said. He gave Bellamy a quick salute, and gave a deep mock bow to Clarke and then, before Bellamy knew what to do, he was climbing down the window.

Once he had processed what had just happened, Bellamy's face hardened and he was storming back toward her door. Hurrying in front of him, Clarke spread her arms out across the doors, pushing it closed with her foot.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Get out of the way, Your Highness," Bellamy growled. "I don't want to have to move you by force."

"You can't tell anybody!"

Bellamy actually laughed at that.

"Excuse me?"

Clarke lowered her arms but didn't move out of the way of the door. Bellamy was fuming and she wasn't sure if it was the fact that he walked in and saw a man in her room, or that Finn snubbed him or because she was telling him what to do, but whatever it was, he was angrier than she'd even seen him, including when he'd found out who she really was.

"He's...a friend. And telling my mom or the other guards that he was here hurts more than just him and more than just me."

"Explain." He wasn't trying to move around her anymore, so she counted it as progress. Progress she was probably about to ruin, but at least it would stall long enough that when he finally found the Chief Guard, Finn would be long gone from the castle.

"I can't." He frowned at her and she sighed. "It's not just my secret to tell! But he's a friend. And he won't come here again. I wasn't putting myself or your job in any danger. You just have to trust me."

"Right," he scoffed. "Trust you."

He growled the words. She ducked her head automatically, not brave enough to look up and see the total disdain on his face. He was never going to trust her again.

She was stuck with a guard who didn't trust her, didn't like her, didn't care about her. She was stuck with a guard who would rather be anywhere but around her, and she was stuck with a guard who she desperately wanted to make things right with. Who she desperately wanted to have the freedom and luxury of trust with again. To be Griff again.

And he was never going to let that happen.

"I'll let you know when trust is an option between us, Highness," he said. He moved her aside easily, one hand pushing gently on her shoulder, and slammed the door shut behind him.

It was a job, he told himself. It would be easy.

Watch the princess. Watch the people around the princess. Watch the people around the people around the princess. Watch where the princess's food came from. Watch who feeds the princess. Watch who speaks to her, who touches her. Watch who the princess touches. What she touches. When she touches it. Watch who is watching her.

Walk her to her rooms, to the throne room, outside the castle, around the grounds, down into the city to shop. Walk no more than a few feet behind her, hand on the hilt of the sword to be ready at a moment's notice.

Watch the princess.

Watch how her hair falls down over her shoulders in waves instead of small, sweaty coils popping out from beneath a cap. Watch how her clothes fit tailored to her body instead of coming up too short above her wrists, or too long below her ankles. Watch how her face was calm and guarded, closed off instead of open and flushed and grinning at him.

Watch the five feet of space between them at all times, the space he could have bridged with a sword reaching out and crashing against hers, or his hand reaching out to rub a salve over her sore and blistered palms.

Watch the princess.

"Good," the knight called to Clarke. He wiped his brow and smiled at her. Bellamy dug the tip of his sword a little further into the ground. "That was really good, your Highness. Want to try again?"

He waited for Clarke's nod, which she gave readily-happily even, far happier than she looked when he'd make her practice drill after drill, the steady monotone 'again' the only noise besides their breathing and grunting-and Bellamy saw the knight smile back at her and gesture for her to step forward, make the first move.

He ground his teeth.

He wasn't sure what the feeling in his stomach was, like a hunk of stone rolling around, back and forth colliding with every one of his major organs as he stood off to the side watching her. Watch her watch the knight. Watching her smile at the knight. Watching the knight go bit easier on her than he should have if he was really trying to teach her to fight, no doubt because she was the princess.

That was probably what it was. He just wasn't teaching Clarke right. And no matter what Bellamy thought about Clarke, even if he hated her, even if she'd lied to him and took something away from him before he'd even known he'd had it, she should still know how to fight.

That's what it was. This guy, this knight, just wasn't teaching her right. And that was wrong.

It had nothing to do with the fact that she was giggling in a way she-well, Griff-never did all those nights by the armory, or that the knight, Lincoln he thought his name was, was about twice his size and far more charming than he could ever hope to be. And he was probably noble generations back. Bellamy was a rat in a lion's skin and that's all he'd ever be.

Clarke came jogging over to him, reaching for the towel that sat atop the rack of practice swords that stood next to him. He grabbed it and shoved it onto her hands. She shot him a small smile of gratitude, even almost made his eye that time, and wiped her brow.

"I think I'm getting better," She said, slumping down against the wall that stood behind them. "What do you think?"

Bellamy snorted and shook his head without looking over at her.

"What."

Clarke was glaring at him, brow furrowed angrily. _There_ , he thought. _That's more what she looked like during those nights_.

"Nothing," he shrugged. "Just think he's going a little easy on you, that's all."

"It's just practice," Clarke spat back. "It's not like he's actually going to try and kill me." Her voice was rough and tight. Defensive, but he could tell she was hurt by when he didn't say that she was getting better. Even if he wasn't training her now, she still must have thought his opinion meant something.

Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.

He almost apologized. He almost nodded and agreed with her, told her that she was getting better, and that soon she'd be able to fight any one of the knights and win. That she was right, and sometimes it was better to take it easy during practice. That Lincoln was a great knight and a good instructor and she was lucky to be working with him, and that she should run back over, away from Bellamy, and practice some more.

But then he thought of the look on her face when she walked into the hall they day he found out who she was, how she had clearly never been planning on telling him, of the boy crawling through her window a few nights before, another secret, another brick in the wall between him and who she really was.

"What we did was just practice," he said instead. "Though I suppose, if I had known exactly who I was throwing my sword around with, I might have taken it easier too."

Her jaw dipped, she looked as if he'd slapped her. He saw her nibble her lip, trying to think of something equally horrible to say back to him, or some way to defend herself, say that just because she was the princess didn't mean she couldn't fight, and that her beating Lincoln in a spar or two had nothing to do with special treatment and everything to do with her own hard work. But instead she worried her lip for a moment before turning her face away from him so that he couldn't see her eyes.

She wiped the rag across the back of her neck.

"Maybe if I'd had a real teacher all along, I wouldn't need anyone to go easy on me," she spat as she threw the rag back at him and picked up her sword, jogging back out into the middle of the practice field to meet Lincoln.

"Ready?" he heard Lincoln ask her when she got there, sword raised.

She nodded. "Ready."

He found her sitting in the stables after that.

She'd run off right after with her practice with Lincoln, sticking her sword in the soft ground and glaring at him before she stomped off, daring him to follow her.

He'd stopped Lincoln from pulling the blade from the ground with a hand to his wrist and a shake of his head.

"Take a breath," he said, pulling the sword out from the dirt himself. "I got this."

His boots clapped against the floor of the stables as he made his way down the aisle to the stall in the back corner, where her horse was kept. She was sat down on a wooden stool next to her horse, her back to him, stroking the dappled grey horse's shoulder.

Bellamy dropped the sword down on the ground next to her.

"You may be a princess," he said, resting against the wall. "But part of learning how to use a sword is learning how to take care of it."

She grabbed at the sword, resting her hands on the hilt while the tip stuck into the ground. But she didn't move.

"I had a different teacher once," she said. "He said that."

He snorted, surprised at himself for playing along with her game. "He sounds like a pretty good teacher."

"Yes," her answer was immediate, but her voice was soft and scratchy. "But it didn't matter, at the end of the day he was still an ass."

She stood up, sword in hand, and walk round the horse. She stroked his fur as she went, coming to his head on the other side, taking it in both hands and leaning her own forehead against that of the horse.

"Comet and I have grown up together," she said. "She was a foal when I was a little girl. She's the only one who really knows all my secrets." She pulled her head away from the horse and glared at him. "We all have secrets, Sir Bellamy. Only a fool tells them to someone she barely knows."

With that, she stormed out of the stable.

"Thelonious says your training is going well," the Queen said. "Sir Lincoln says you're practically a natural with a sword."

Clarke felt herself bite down a laugh at that. Yeah, she thought. A natural. Absolutely.

"Sir Lincoln is an excellent teacher." She pushed her chair out from the table. "Excuse me."

She barely heard his footsteps following her anymore. They were a steady beat, matching with hers now that he'd gotten enough practice. Perfectly in synch but five steps away. Step by step by step.

Finn started taking her on deliveries. He didn't think Harper's system was enough. He thought it was a bad move for Clarke politically, ignoring her when she said she didn't care about those things, calling her lazy instead. Not directly of course, but he'd implied it well enough when he told her that bringing the supplies to Harper and watching her divvy them up to her people to be delivered was only doing half a job.

So she and Monty were split, Monty with Monroe and Clarke with Finn, each going to different houses and shops every night, dolling out supplies from the palace, and then meeting back up by the gate to the lower towns to sneak back into the castle together.

She didn't mind it. She was restless after all, even with her sword training. Bellamy was right, Lincoln was a good instructor but he went easy on her, especially when there were more eyes out the practice field, watching them. He swung a little harder and moved a little quicker when it was just Bellamy, off to the side, watching them, but even then it was never as tiresome as training with Bellamy.

"The Forest Clans are looking to expand their lands," Finn said to her. They were on their way back from their deliveries. Finn always stuck to the homes by the border of the city. It was where he was from and he knew the neighborhood. He also thought they were the most ignored by the kingdom.

"Expand to where?" Clarke asked. "They're the Forest Clans. They have almost total control over the woods within our borders."

"They aren't the only ones in the forests," Finn countered.

"Yeah, bandits and nomads, a few scavengers here and there, but no one who poses an actual threat to them."

Finn shrugged, kicking a stone along with his foot as they walked. She noticed he did that a lot. Got quiet when he thought she wasn't understanding what he was saying. Asking questions until she said what he wanted to hear.

"Where would they expand to?" Clarke asked.

"West, would be my guess. Past the borders of the forest and into the farm land."

Clarke stopped in her tracks. Finn didn't notice at first, kicking the stone back and forth between his feet as he walked, a little game to entertain himself. When he did notice, he kicked the rock up and caught it, turning around to her expectantly.

"There are villages in those farmlands. Farmers who use that land to grow crops for the entire kingdom." She shook her head. What he was saying could mean catastrophe for the entire kingdom. "Our entire trade system depends on those farmers and their lands, if the Forest Clans are planning to invade that could-"

"Not everyone in the Forest Clan is a barbarian, Clarke. Peaceful negotiations between us and them can exist."

She wondered when people were going to stop putting words in her mouth.

They were nearly at the gates then, and she spotted Monty. She held her hand out for the empty basket Finn had underarm, and he slipped it onto her outstretched arm, giving her wrist a squeeze.

"See you soon, Clarke."

"Right," she said. "Yes."

And she scrambled away before she could think of what the pull in her gut meant.

"You're not nearly as sneaky as you think you are."

Bellamy's voice was a whisper, but it filled up the whole room and startled her as she made to climb through the window. Grabbing onto the window sill, she steadied herself and lowered herself into her room. When she turned to face him, his face was morphing from something akin to shock, to cool practiced indifference. She wasn't sure what it was he was reacting to until she caught a look at herself in her mirror.

Her clothes. She looked like Griff again.

"Seeing as you've never caught me until tonight, I'd say I'm exactly as sneaky as I think I am."

He raised an eyebrow at her.

"We both know that's not true."

The memory of him lurking behind her those days ago when she would be sneaking down to the armory instead of the lower towns flashed in her mind. No, it certainly wasn't the first time she'd been caught sneaking around by him. Probably not the last, she'd dare to say, as well. She watched him carefully, hoping she wasn't reading him wrong. His tone wasn't as cold or hard as it had been the past few days, and she thought she even saw a flicker of a smile on his face. So she shrugged like she couldn't help it, and smiled back at him.

"This have something to do with what you couldn't tell me the other day?" He nodded to her clothes, glanced at the window.

"Something to do with it, yes," she said.

"Still not going to tell me then?" She could have been wrong. She could have been entirely misreading his tone, just projecting what she wanted to hear out of him but she thought, she thought that maybe there was a hint of disappointment in his voice.

"Not until I know you aren't going to stop me."

His fingers were drumming across his legs, a solid _pit pat pat pit pat pat pit pat pat_ filling the silence between them and she closed her eyes for a moment and set her breathing to the rhythm. It was the first time in weeks they weren't arguing. The first time in weeks they were talking, for longer than a minute, without arguing, without him yelling at her, or saying something just to be mean, or punishing her for lying to him and she just wanted a second to breathe it all in.

She stepped closer to him.

"I know I can trust you with it," she said, hoping that this bridge back to their old relationship wasn't just in her imagination. They were making progress. She could feel him swaying back into how it was when she would sneak down to the armory and he would train her every night until she was too sore to do anything other than plop right down on the wall beside him and rub the salve into both their hands. "I'll tell you where I go, if you keep it to yourself, but I'm not going to stop going."

He was silent, watching her. He pushed himself off of the wall as she got closer and closer to him. She set her cap on a table just beside him, her hair slipping down onto her shoulders in uneven, sweaty clumps. He had an old look in his eye, the one she used to think was reserved just for Griff. For when they'd sit and talk after sparring, sharing an apple between them before he'd shove her shoulder and send her home. Always too much of a gentleman to do anything other than that.

"I'm not quite sure you understand how this works," Bellamy said once she got closer to him. "Tell me or don't tell me, it's your choice. But I'm going to find out either way."

And suddenly she was in her room by herself, her smock and trousers too thin to keep away the cold.

Clarke had been avoiding her mother all week.

It was her birthday, and there was some big, horrible ball planned for it, and her mother had been trying to catch her all week to shove her into some ridiculous dress and remind her how to behave in front of all of their guests, as if she'd never been allowed out around other people before.

She was hiding in her room when she heard a knock on her door.

"Go away," she said. "I'm sick."

The door opened anyway and Wells and Monty came in, smiling and unsympathetic. Wells held up a bottle of wine.

"Doesn't this feel familiar?"

She laughed at that, amazed at how much had changed in the few weeks since they celebrated her father's birthday, drinking together, alone in her room.

Monty tossed a small vial onto her bed next to where her face peeked out from behind the cushions.

"For later," he said at her questioning glance. "Trust me."

She sat up and held her arms out to her friends, pulling them into her and toppling them over so they all landed in a messy pile on her bed. It had been far, far too long since the three of them had any time all together. And as horrible as the night was bound to get, she couldn't help be thankful for the day because it allowed for that.

"I've been doing some thinking," Wells said. "And I think, at this ball, you should formally renounce your claim to the throne. Just hand it over to me. My birthday present to you."

She shoved his shoulder, swiping the bottle from his hand.

"Don't even tease, you know I would if I could, you brat."

Wells shrugged and gave her a wide, dopey smile and she wondered how much wine he and Monty had stolen before they made their way up to her room. They fell into old habits, the three of them sitting sprawled out on the bed that always felt too big for just her, handing the bottle back and forth, spilling on themselves and the mattress, laughing and talking and singing. They fell right back into old castle gossip, things they'd picked up from servants, or found out themselves hiding in the old nooks and crannies that nobody bothered to check anymore and she felt a bit like a child again.

She forgot about her sneaking around, she forgot about the pained look Bellamy gave her each time he saw her, and her desperate need to prove she was a competent princess to Finn, her hopes that she could convince Harper to call her a friend, not just an ally, about the threats rumored to be coming from the Forest Clans, and the ghostly rumors of the men from the mountains, about the horrible ball where'd she'd have to dance with all sorts of painted peacocks just to make her mother happy when she'd much rather be out, in the cool dewy air of night, swinging a sword against a partner. She let herself forget it all, falling happily into her pillow as Monty and Wells stole the bottle from her hand and pushed her back playfully.

"There is one catch to all this," Monty said solemnly.

Wells nodded. "You mother thought it would be better coming from us than from her."

A rock dropped in Clarke's stomach. Wells stood off the bed and went to the wardrobe on her far wall, opening it carefully so that the door blocked Clarke's view of what he was pulling out.

"A birthday present to you," he said, pulling out a dress. It was beautiful and ornate and not at all anything she would ever be comfortable in, with its tight bodice and low cut neckline. "For you to wear tonight."

Clarke took another swig from the bottle and groaned into her pillow.

There were too many people in great hall. Twice as many people stuffed next to each other on benches, elbows touching as the reached for their wine, thighs pressed next to each other all down the line. Too many knights in the corner laughing after too much ale, too many old men leering at the queen and the princess and all the noble girls. Too many nobles holding their hands out to the princess, like they just knew she would take it, too many smirks sent down to her, too many hands tugging on her own, pulling her up to dance. Too many arms succeeding in dragging her out into the middle of the floor.

Bellamy gripped his goblet tighter, swallowing down more than he should have. He was on the job. He needed to focus. He wasn't there as a guest, he was there as a guard. And he had to have his eyes on the princess at all times. Unfortunately.

He had to have his eyes on her as she sat close to Wells in the corner, whispering something to him and giggling, his eyes on her as she pushed Monty out into the middle of the floor to dance on his own after Wells had taken away his goblet, his eyes on her as her new swords instructor gave a little bow and pressed a kiss to her hand, his eyes on her when she smiled at him.

Bellamy hated balls.

He took a deep breath and took one more long, slow sip of his wine.

"You don't seem to be enjoying yourself," a familiar voice came from beside him.

Her dress was dark blue, midnight, shining in the low light of the hall. He looked away from her, not wanting to see whatever it was in her eyes that she came to show him. A kitchen servant in a princess's' gown coming to pry something, some truth, from him that he didn't want to give up just yet.

"I'm not here to enjoy myself," he said flatly. "I'm working."

He heard her scoff next to him. "You can take one night off," Clarke said. He felt her arm brush his as she lifted it to swat a stray hair from out of her face.

"No," he shook his head. "I can't."

A servant with a tray stocked with wine walked past them and Clarke reached out and grabbed two, holding her arm out to give him the spare. He looked away and kept his hands at his sides.

"Come on, Bellamy," she said quietly. "Stop punishing yourself in an attempt to punish me."

He felt a red heat sweep over him at her words, embarrassment, anger, something else, he didn't know, but what he did know was that he had to do something to get her to walk away, so maybe if he took the drink, she'd take it as some sort of small victory and leave it at that. He jerked out his hand and she handed him the wine.

He downed it in one gulp and hissed when it burned his throat on the way down. He slammed the goblet down on the nearest table and raised an eyebrow at her when he noticed her watching him.

"There," he said, voice rough. "Good?"

She looked away, sipping at her own wine. There was a flush working its way up her neck and he wondered if it was from the wine or just a reaction to his outburst. Suddenly she giggled into her goblet and Bellamy held his hand out for it, feeling a heat radiate off of her cheeks.

"I think you've had enough for the both of us."

She swayed, bumping into him, the sot material of her dress brushing against his hand. Her hand reached out and gripped onto his arm, steadying herself. She righted herself, straightening up, but her hand stayed on his arm, burning heat through his shirt and his chainmail. He shifted uncomfortably, trying not to react visibly. Trying not to think about why he was reacting and why he had to hide it. Trying not to think, really.

"Dance with me," she said and he pulled back.

"What?" She couldn't be serious.

"Dance with me," she said again, her hand tugging where it rested on his arm. A wave of heat washed over him, the room feeling too small of a sudden. Glancing down at her he saw the smile on her face, one he hadn't seen in weeks and it made his stomach twist, made him nearly forget why he hadn't seen it in weeks or why he'd been pushing her away, stopping all her efforts to bridge the gap between them again.

But then he glanced down and saw the gown where there should have been grimy trousers, and big thick golden curls where there should have been small, sweaty strand of hair peeking out from a cap that was too small and worn. And he remembered the look on her face when she walked into the hall to see him standing next to her mother for the first time.

"I'm not here to dance, Princess, I'm working."

She didn't let go, though. "Come, on, Bellamy. I want to."

He ripped his arm out of hers, stepping back, anger dripping out of him. She wasn't listening. She never, ever listened to what he was said. It didn't matter how many times she smiled or joked with him, every time he thought about fixing whatever it was they had almost had between them, she jumps back, and he stumbles into whatever it was she was lying about or hiding from him that time. He wasn't going to do it again.

"Has it ever occurred to you that I don't want to dance with _you_?"

She pulled back like she'd been burned. He saw water welling up in her eyes but she turned her head away, too proud to let him see. His stomach cramped up, guilty, at the look on her face. He didn't mean it, not really. He just wanted to make her feel as low as he did.

"Clarke," he said, reaching for her, but she'd already started walking away.

She knew he was going to follow her. It was his job, after all.

She didn't wait to make sure he was behind her though, damn what her mother wanted. She just had to get out of that ridiculous ball. She couldn't breath in there.

She thought about stopping in her room, changing out of the dress, but she didn't want to stop moving, so she barreled through the corridors, ignoring the shout of her mother when she ran out from the ball. She broke into a run, racing across the courtyard, and she tore through the door to the armory.

Finally, she let out a breath, her hands shaking by her sides.

She felt good once the sword was in her hands. Well, not good, but better at least. A bit taller, after getting so shrunken down in that ballroom.

She walked back over to the dummy, feeling strange stepping over the grass in her new dress after so many weeks away from fights in the dark with it. The rumble of thunder overhead should have startled her, but instead she lifted her sword, slicing hard into the dummy as the rain poured down on top of her.

"Hey!" A bellow came from behind her.

She turned around, her hair sticking to her face from the rain, her dress sopping and soaked through, the hem sticking to the ground, twisting around her ankles as she turned. Bellamy stood in front of her, the rain plinking against the mail draping from his arms, his eyebrows drawn together creating a ridge that drops of rain dripped off of.

She turns back around, pounding the sword into the dummy over and over and over.

"Clarke!"

She whips around, holding the sword out in front of her.

"What?" Her voice was harsh and shrill, dying out immediately, drowned out by the rain dumping on top of them. His eyes widened at her shriek, his feet faltering before he seemed to make a decision. He pulled his sword out from the sheath at his side, and nodded at her.

It was some sick sort of game, letting her go back to how they were after he'd just pushed her away. Pretending like it was any other night outside the armory, except she was soaked to the bone in a dress not made for fighting in and she had a white hot fury coursing through her veins. But she looked at his outstretched blade and swung her sword as hard as she could.

She was better than the last time they'd done this. Practice with Lincoln, while it wasn't anything like her practice with Bellamy, had helped her, pushed her past where he'd left off and he stumbled backwards, unused to the force behind her swing. At his stumble, she pushed forward, harder again, striking against his blade again and again and again, beating him back even further.

He regained his composure and pushed back, knocking to her, forcing her back, matching her blow for blow.

They'd never sparred like that before, and it wasn't just that she was better. There was anger under each swing, from both sides, and Clarke couldn't help but think that maybe there was something important lying within however it was going to end.

Eventually she was out of breath, out of energy, and she couldn't take it anymore. She stepped to the side, dropping her sword to the ground and wiping an arm across her forehead.

"I can't," she said, slumping against the stone wall. "I can't do it anymore."

His chest was heaving, sweat mixed with rain pouring down his face, and he lowered his sword, the tip sinking into the soft mud at his feet. He bowed his head, taking a step back from her.

She shook her head at him. "I don't...Why can't you see me the way you saw Griff? Why can't we go back to how it was?"

He slumped back too. He wouldn't look at her. When he finally did, his face was set in stone. "Don't you get it?" he said, rough. "You were never Griff. Never. Any semblance of equality between us was made up. You always had the upper hand, I just didn't know it."

"But there was...something." Her voice didn't sound right to her ears. Small and feeble, wobbling, Maybe it was the rain, drowning it out, or the thudding of her own heart against her ribs. "We were friends...You liked me."

She watched as his head tipped up and raindrops that were clinging to the tips of his shaggy hair fell from their strands and trailed down his face. He worried his lip, eyes boring into hers. A small cough and then,

"Things change."

He picked her sword up off the sodden ground and brought it back into the armory with him, waiting there for her to come in, go back to her room and dry off. Instead, she turned on her heels, and ran.


	3. Chapter 3

He heard footsteps on the other side of the door.

Groggy, dragging footsteps. A grunt at the sound of his knock and then the footsteps. If Wells' room was laid out anything like Clarke's was then he could practically picture the table he heard Wells knocking into before hearing his soft curse, muffled both by the thick wooden door between them and the hiss of breath Wells let out as he swore.

Impatient, Bellamy knocked on the door again, his fist pounding painfully into the wood.

"A moment, please," he heard Wells grumble angrily as he padded his way across his chambers, over to the door.

He'd clearly been sleeping, if the red mark left from the pillow on his cheek was anything to go by. Not that Bellamy had expected anything else. The ball had ended hours ago, everyone in the castle had been in bed, and they'd all thought Clarke had gone to bed hours ago, too.

Wells pulled the door open, staring at him blankly, waiting for him to speak. Bellamy worried his lip, wondering exactly how to explain what he was doing.

"Sir Bellamy," Wells sighed. "I'm sure whatever it is, it's very important, but next time if I could _request_ that you wait until the sun has at least risen? I'd appreciate it-"

"It's Clarke," he said. Wells eyes blew wide and for one stupid, simple moment he thought it was because he'd used her name, like they were friends, like they were equals. He hurried to correct himself. "It's the princess," he tried again, but Wells was already stepping aside, reaching out to grip onto his arm and drag him into his room, glancing down the corridor before he pulled the door closed behind them.

"What's happened?" Wells studied him for a moment, watched the way his hands wrung together in front of him, pulling at the skin at his knuckles, the way his feet weren't quite still, the way he wouldn't quite meet his eye, the way he chewed on the inside of his cheek. Bellamy felt small under his gaze, but he didn't know where else to go.

"She's run off, hasn't she?" Wells broke the steady silence between them. He shook his head. "She does that."

His voice was sad, like he'd spent too many nights pacing his bedroom waiting for her to come knocking on the door, letting him know she was alright, she was back, she'd blown off all the anger in her and she was okay now. Like he'd gotten used to her running instead of talking.

"But you know that, I think."

Bellamy's head snapped up, his eyes meeting Wells'.

Wells rolled his eyes. "You were the knight." He huffed out a laugh, chuckling at a joke Bellamy didn't quite get. "The one Clarke was sneaking out to meet, the one who was teaching her to use a sword."

Bellamy didn't say anything. He didn't think anybody knew about that. Didn't think Clarke would tell anybody. Didn't think she'd admit to it, that she dressed up like a kitchen servant and had a lowly, second rate knight teach her how to defend herself in the dead of night. He'd thought that had been something she'd kept hidden, tucked away, a secret she didn't want let out.

"Look," he said. "I-"

"She wouldn't have stopped either way, it's good you were there." Bellamy watched as Wells' lips twisted up at one smile, trying to shove down his smile. He didn't even want to think about what could possibly be going on his Wells' head. He didn't even really want to think about what was going on in his own head. It would be too much, too much for the moment, it would distract him and confuse him and he could already feel a nervous warmth itching up his neck, so he pushed it side and stopped Wells before he could carry on any further.

"I can't find her. We were in the armory, we were sparring during the banquet, and we-we got in a fight and she got mad and ran away." He dropped his eyes down. "I haven't seen her since."

Wells was already pulling his boots on, grabbing his sword from the table in the middle of his room-Bellamy was right, it was set up just like Clarke's but in reverse-strapping it into his belt.

Bellamy felt a small weight lift from his back as Wells clapped him on the back, motioning for Bellamy to follow him.

"She's probably fine," he said. Bellamy nodded. She was probably fine. Clarke could take care of herself.

He pushed back the thought of the burgeoning unrest he knew about in the lower towns and the storm she ran out into, or the fact that she wasn't disguised like she normally was when she left her rooms at night, but in a big, beautiful gown, soaked down, an easy target, a clear outside.

She was probably fine.

 _Things change._

Her dress was covered in mud, six inches deep from the hem at least, and splattered all up the rest of it, splashing up onto her bodice as she ran quickly, her world blurred by the rain and her fuzzy eyes, not able to focus on anything. She felt her breath wracking in her chest, pushing her lungs up against her ribs painfully with each ragged step she fell forward, moving, moving, moving, further from the castle, from Bellamy, from everything she was supposed to be there, everything she wanted to be but couldn't, just away from it all.

 _Things change._

The words were ringing in her ears, reminding her with each step how stupid she was, how foolish. How that was all she would ever be.

 _Things change._

She didn't know where she was going. She knew a few people in the lower towns, but none who would take her in without Harper, and Harper wasn't likely to help her out without Monty. She remembered the look in Harper's eye when she found out who Clarke really was, the hesitation, the fear, the flicker of nervousness while she decided to trust her or not. Monty made her human to them, made her worth listening to, without him she was a princess out of place, unwelcome in the towns, uneasy on her own.

She thought of the border towns, where she'd gone on her last few runs with Finn. Streets, narrow and winding, right by the edge of the forest.

She was there before she'd even realized what her feet were doing.

The rain was still pounding down, hard and thick, swollen drops smacking into her skin, drowning out her senses, but she closed her eyes, steadying her breath.

In. And out.

 _Things change._

In. And out. In. And out.

She felt the air fill her lungs slowly, expanding against her ribs, lifting her chest, and then seeping out slowly between her lips.

There was a crack behind her, a foot snapping a branch and she froze, breath caught halfway in her throat.

"Well," a gruff voice said. "What do we have here?"

She felt a long, spindly hand reach out and grab her arm, pulling her in roughly, a thin, bony body pressing into her back, keeping her in place. She pushed back against the arm barring her in, but it just gripped her tighter, a laugh bubbling out of her captor.

"Careful there, princess," a husky voice said, dripping into her ear, warm and sticky, heating her whole body in a way that made her want to slip out of her own skin. "Don't do anything reckless."

Clarke made her body go limp. If she didn't struggle they might think she was giving up.

She twisted her neck around to look at the person holding her into place. It was a lean face, full of dirt and grime, with scars running up both cheeks of the woman holding her in. When she noticed Clarke turning toward her, she gave her a slow, sickly smile.

"That's it, princess," she said. "No point in doing something stupid, right?"

Clarke felt a growl growing in her chest, but she bit her cheek, pressing it back. She tried to remember what Bellamy taught her all those nights ago, about what to do when you're stuck or captured. How to get yourself out of it, or at least gave yourself enough room to have a head start.

But she couldn't remember any of it. All she could feel was the press of a blade into the fabric at her back, a warning or a reminder of what was happening, she wasn't sure, but it was enough to cover her throat in a thin layer of bile.

She swallowed a breath. She couldn't do _nothing_. No matter what happened, she wasn't going to sit by and let herself be captured or killed without fighting back. She felt her chest tightened as she decided what to do, lifting a foot slowly off the ground to kick back into her captor but before she even got the chance she heard another snap of a twig, and then a _thud_ , and the woman whose arm was wrapped around her was falling to the ground.

Clarke scrambled up, prying herself out of the the loose grip of the woman, now lying unconscious on the ground, and shuffled back, her hands in front of her, staring at a girl, a young girl, probably just a few years younger than herself, standing with a thick tree branch gripped between her fist, looking down at the unconscious woman with a scowl.

Her head was spinning.

"What-" she started but the girl shook her head, tossing the branch aside.

"We don't have time for that," she said, already walking past her. When Clarke didn't immediately follow her she called over her shoulder. "Come on. You need something less ridiculous to wear if you're going to be wandering around down here."

Clarke watched her for a moment longer, listening to her heavy footsteps crack against the branches under her, waiting for her heart to stop beating triple time in her chest, but when it wouldn't slow, she gathered her tarnished and tattered skirts up in her hands, chasing after the girl with the dark hair.

Her name was Octavia.

She told her that when she shoved a cup of mead into her hands, pouring one for herself and plopping down into the chair across from her.

"I'm Octavia," she said. "Here. Drink up, it'll warm you up."

She'd given Clarke clothes to change into, turning toward the small fire on the other side of the room to give Clarke some privacy as she'd changed. Clarke had shrugged out of her dress, peeling it away from her skin where it suck from the rain and the mid caking it onto her. She'd looked around the room, a bed in one corner, a table in another, a fire on the wall between them, and felt immediately guilty for taking from the girl.

"You don't have to-" she'd started, but Octavia gave her a cold stare that looked eerily familiar, so she'd shut her mouth and taken the clothes from her.

"Having the princess in any home is a risk in these parts," she said. "This is just as much for me as it is for you."

Clarke stilled at that. Octavia wasn't _wrong_ , she knew most of the townspeople weren't fond of the royals anyway, but there were groups she knew-from her runs with Monty and Harper and Finn-that hated them, wanted them out of power, wanted them dead. Hearing it from Octavia's lips made a cold chill run up her spine and she wondered if she was really safe with her hear, on the border streets, far far away from anyone who knew her.

"And what side of that line do you fall on then?" Clarke asked, careful to keep her voice steady.

She heard a scoff behind her.

"Don't worry princess, my brother works in the castle," she said. "Whatever side he's fighting on, I'm with."

"Your brother works in the castle?"

She pulled the thin shirt over her head. It was tight around her chest, Octavia's frame was much smaller than hers, and the sleeves clung a little too close to her skin. But it was better than the gown.

Octavia was studying her carefully, a curious look in her eyes, deciding whether or not she wanted to tell Clarke what she was thinking. Eventually she sighed, shrugging as she took a sip of her own drink before speaking.

"He's a knight."

She said it like a challenge, like she was daring Clarke to laugh or call her a liar, or _something_ , but she didn't. She just sat back and asked.

"A knight?"

"Yes," Octavia growled. "I know you royals think that only noblemen should be knights but he's the best one they've got."

"I don't-"Clarke started but she let her words die off. Octavia was right, only noblemen were allowed to be knights. That's the way it had always been. She'd never even thought to question it. It made more sense for the nobles with land and tenants and power to be the ones to fight for the kingdom instead of asking the people who were just scraping by. But she'd never thought about if a commoner _wanted_ to be a knight.

"He's the only one in the guard who cares about people who aren't the royals. The rest of them don't trouble themselves with thinking about who lives and dies," she spat.

Clarke felt a flare of anger rise up in her chest, for people like Wells and Lincoln, for people like Bellamy, for the good people in the castle guard she knew, who helped her when she lost her father, or sparred with kids in the towns. She opened her mouth to argue, but Octavia carried on.

"He was teaching a girl to fight," she said, a sliver of a proud smile working its way onto her face. "Like he taught me. Just a kitchen servant too, nobody special."

Clarke felt her heart slow in her chest, each beat pounding into her ribs, like the air around her, like time itself was slowing down. It couldn't be. She wasn't understanding. But a small lump formed in her throat waiting for Octavia to prove her wrong.

"Might not seem so special to you, learning to fight," Octavia said, standing to tend to the fire. "But not everybody's born with a golden guard around them."

Her words were dipped in bitterness, hard for Clarke to swallow. But she was right. She was lucky to have been born where she was, born to be who was, to have what she has. She was lucky to have knights surrounding her in case something went wrong, and to have someone there to teach her when she asked.

But none of that meant she didn't care that her people didn't have all that.

"What was her name," the words slipped out of Clarke's mouth before she could stop them. "The kitchen servant?"

Octavia turned to her, an eyebrow raised but a blank expression masking her face.

"Why?" she asked. "Gonna have them thrown in the stocks?"

"When was the last time you heard about _anyone_ being thrown in the stocks?" Clarke bristled. "Just tell me the damn name, I want to...help her. If I can."

Octavia didn't look like she believed her. She nibbled on her bottom lip poking at the fire, like she was trying to figure out what game Clarke could possibly be playing, and what trap she might be falling into if she told Clarke the name. But eventually…

"Griff," Octavia said. "The girl's name was Griff."

Clarke felt woozy. Like the air was too warm and too sticky and too tight. Pressing in on her and pushing her, making her sway from side to side.

"God, you look like shit," Octavia said walking back toward her, picking the cup up from the table in front of Clarke and setting it aside. "I think that's probably enough mead for now."

"How?" The word felt like it was ripped from Clarke's throat, desperate and anxious. She needed to know now.

"How what?"

Clarke cleared her throat, steadying her breath, giving herself a moment to cool and collect herself. To make it seem like curiosity instead of a burning wonder.

"How did your brother become a knight?" she asked. "Only nobles become knights."

Octavia rolled her eyes. "He lied, princess." Unnerving, to hear that title sound so similar from a different set of lips. "Shocking, I know. There's more scandal in the court than you think."

 _He lied._

She didn't know what to do with that. It was too much. After weeks of being punished and pushed away and berated, feeling small and stupid and guilty for lying to him, she finds out he was doing the exact same thing to her. Since they met, since she said her name was Griff and he sauntered across that field, telling her how to stand and how to swing and how to duck, he was _lying_ , lying to her about everything.

And weeks after her own truth was out there, her own lie festering out in the open for everyone to see, he didn't bother to tell her any of it.

He had a sister, living out in a hut in the lower towns, where he grew up.

It was too much and she couldn't deal with it all. All she wanted was for the room to stop spinning and the aching bruise on her arm to go away. She wanted to go home.

Slowly, she stood up, pushing the chair back from the table.

"Thank you," she said, her own voice sounding strange in her ears. "For helping me and for giving me the clothes." She didn't even feel herself speaking, she didn't know what she was saying, she just wanted to get out of there. "You can come to the castle anytime. You've got a place there-if you want it. But I have to go home now."

She was nearly out the door when she heard footsteps behind her. Octavia was pulling a cloak on over her shoulders, shrugging at Clarke's confused look.

"My brother's in charge of your safety," she said softly. "If something happens to you on the way back, he's going to get punished for it. I know these streets better than you, I can get you home quicker."

Clarke nodded, swallowing, and then followed Octavia back out into the streets, wondering when exactly her life got so confusing.

The streets were never quiet at night. He remembered that much.

It had been a long time since he'd gone down at night. One day out of the week another knight came to watch Clarke, and Bellamy got a day off. And he would loop through the old, dank streets, back to the hut that was too small and too dingy for Octavia. But she wouldn't leave.

He barely got her to take food and money from him as it was. He couldn't get her to move out of the hole they'd called home for so long.

But he hadn't walked the streets at night in a long time. Not since he started living in the castle.

And all the noise rang familiar in his ears. The humming and the shuffling, the buzz of people moving and talking and living that was hard to hear unless you knew it. Suddenly he felt like he was ten years old, sneaking around with his friends at night, nicking food from shops and carts while everyone else went to sleep.

"Bellamy," Wells pulled him out of his head. He waved him over with a finger to his mouth. "Over here."

Bellamy shuffled over to him, crouching behind the empty cart Wells was squatting in front of. He heard it too, heavier footsteps, someone not quite used to sneaking around the lower streets at night, walking with a heavy gait, not knowing how easy it made it to spot them.

Clarke came out of the shadows, dressed in clothes that weren't her own, clothes he knew. They were a little too tight on Clarke, restrictive right in the shoulders, made for a slightly narrower frame but stretched from years of wear making the fabric thin. He knew that shirt.

He jumped up, walking over to Clarke quickly, grabbing her elbow.

"Clarke-" but she wrenched her arm away from his hand right as he felt a blade to his back. Clarke opened her mouth to say something, to yell or protest or _something_ , but he just rolled his eyes.

"Very funny, O." He turned around, facing his sister. "Put down the blade before you actually hurt somebody."

She sheathed the dagger, smirking at him. He heard Wells come up behind them, mumbling something to Clarke, confused about who this was and where she went and what the hell was she wearing, but he was pulling his sister into a hug and he didn't care about any of it.

Not at the moment.

"You saw me like four days ago," Octavia teased him.

He flicked her nose. "Things aren't good O," he said. "Especially around here. Forgive me for being worried."

In truth, he missed her. Everyday, he missed his sister. He'd wake up somedays, forgetting where he was and how he got there, thinking he was still down in the lower towns cramped in a corner next to O, feeling his stomach growl, waking up to figure out where they were going to steal food from that day.

And then he'd remember where he was and how Octavia was still down there all alone, not as hungry, but alone, and he'd hate himself a little bit for not being able to get her to go with him.

Octavia just rolled her eyes at him.

"Come on," she said. "Let's get the princess home so you don't get sacked. I don't want to have to start stealing from Old Man Pike again."

He turned back around to Clarke, but she wouldn't look at him.

"Clarke-" he started again, but she cut him off.

"It's _Princess_ Clarke," she snapped. "Remember? Gotta be honest about who we are, right?"

He stepped back, startled by the sudden anger boiling under her words. She wouldn't even look him in the eye. A far cry from the girl who stood in front of him asking him why they couldn't go back to how it was.

When she did raise her eyes they were hard and cold, daring him to say something, to challenge her, to play this game, to spar with her until one of them gave up and that's how they decided who won all of games, the simple moves and countermoves, taking points away with each blow that knocked the other down.

Maybe a few weeks earlier he would have done that. Maybe he would have let her anger wash over him, let her yell at him and prod him and scold him until her face turned blue, but too much had happened for her to pretend like just because she thought she knew something, she had the upper hand now.

"Let's go," he growled. "Princess."

He took her arm, walking forward, waiting for Wells to follow his lead, make sure she didn't run away again while Clarke huffed between them. He ignored Octavia's confused glance, staring straight ahead down all the winding, narrow rows, weaving between shops and homes, the quickest route back to the castle that he knew, so he could bring Clarke back to her room and be done with the whole night.

Suddenly, Clarke stopped.

Bellamy grunted, turning to face her.

"We don't have time for detours, princess," he said, feeling his patience wear thin. "Let's go."

But Clarke didn't move.

She was frowning, a crease between her brows as she stared off past him at something behind his shoulder. He twisted, following her gaze over past the buildings and the carts, to where two figures stood off in a dark alley, just barely visible in the shadows.

One was big, wide and tall, dressed furs and covered in dirt, the markings of the clans. He towered over the other, a hood over his head to hide his face. The other man was small, thin with floppy hair. He knew his face, he'd seen him before but he couldn't place where.

"What…" Clarke murmured as the larger man slipped a small vial into the others hand, and then it clicked. He'd been the man in her room, the one she wouldn't tell him about. Bellamy wrapped his hand around her elbow, pulling her forward with him.

"We really don't have time for this," he grumbled.

"Who's that?" Octavia asked from behind him.

He kept moving, making sure Clarke was steady beside him. He felt her twist in his arm, looking back toward the alley. He felt a knot tighten in his stomach and he couldn't explain it. He didn't know why it mattered to him whether Clarke cared about the man or not. Whether he got to know who Clarke really was from the beginning, or if she lied to him too. How often he snuck through the window and slipped out again before Bellamy saw him. Why she wanted to stop and talk to him so desperately.

"He's nobody," Bellamy growled. "Keep moving."

He followed her into her room when they got back into the castle, like he thought she was going to run away again. Like he could stop her if she wanted to. Like he had any right to tell her what to do or scold her for anything, after he'd done nothing but lie. Lie and lie, time and again.

Lie and hate her. Hate her for lying. Maybe for reminding himself what he was. Hard to forget about all the lies and the secrets spinning around in your own head when you suddenly got a hold of somebody else's.

He closed the door softly behind him, leaning against it for a moment, watching her.

"What you did tonight," he started, his voice low, staring at the ground. "Was reckless. It put you in danger, and it won't happen again."

She scoffed, kicking off the boots Octavia had given her. Pushing her heel against them she slid them across the floor over to him.

"You can give those back to your sister."

She watched him suck in a breath, pulling his bottom lip in between his teeth.

"Clarke-"

She shook her head. She couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe he thought he could stand there and try to explain himself when just a few weeks ago, when the situation was reversed, he wouldn't let her get a word out. It all felt fake, like she was living in some weird dream.

"Don't," she snapped. "For weeks you've been stomping around behind me, an angry shadow, skulking behind me, watching me, judging me, refusing to let me speak for more than a minute at a time, saying you're mad at me for lying, for pretending for a few nights a week to be somebody I wasn't, all the while you'd been lying to me the entire fucking time like it wasn't the same damn thing-"

"The same thing?" Bellamy scoffed. "You think it's the same thing?"

His face was getting red, his eyes dark and hard as he pushed himself off of the door, taking slow steps toward her. She could almost hear the anger growing, rumbling inside his chest as he moved closer, daring her to stop him. She wanted to stoke his anger, make it flare, make him feel how she felt.

"Pretend all you want, Sir Bellamy," she spat. "You're nothing but a lying street rat who wasn't sly enough not to get caught."

He stepped back like he'd been slapped. She wanted to smile, to stand taller because she'd finally won a round, but she felt smaller. Felt sick. Like she'd tripped face first into a freezing puddle of muddy rain water and was slipping, trying to stand straight but she couldn't.

"What about only a fool tells his secrets to someone he barely knows?"

His voice was small. She glanced down and watched his hands grip each other, clenched in front of him. His head was ducked, staring at the boots she's kicked in front of him. She felt a strange itch in the tips of her own fingers, an urge to reach out and smooth away the tension coiled there.

Instead she stepped back, nodding to herself.

"It's a good thing I didn't tell all my secrets then," she said. "I didn't know you at all."

He felt the silence push off of her in waves.

When she opened the door in the morning, stalking out to meet her mother in the throne room, brushing past him with a space between them that felt heavy, he felt it. Blocking him from getting closer than three steps behind her. When she rushed through the castle's corridors to visit Monty in the physician's quarters, like a wall outside that door keeping him from stepping through. When she went out on the grounds to train with Lincoln he was trapped over on the side, each swing of her sword, each grunt, each step she took toward Lincoln, dancing around with him on the field, reminded him of where he was supposed to be, away from her, behind the wall she'd pushed back up between them.

He watched her train, startled by how calm she looked, how easy the sword moved with her, so different than he'd seen just the night before, clashing against his own, her face scrunched up in anger and fear, all of it smoothed away as she sparred with Lincoln.

He felt the stone in his stomach grow heavier.

She wiped her arm across her forehead, swatting at the little beads of sweat threatening to slip down her brow into her eyes. She was smiling. Talking with Lincoln, splashing water from the bucket on her face, she smiled at him, lifting her sword back up.

Her gaze flickered over to him for just a moment, barely even a second, but long enough for the smile to drop off, just as she met his eye.

He was three steps behind her, just like he'd been all day. Following her from no closer, like he was afraid what would happen if he did.

She'd spent all day not talking to him, trying not to talk to him, trying not to even look at him if she could help it because if she did all she would think about were questions she wasn't even sure she wanted answers to.

 _Why did he lie? Why did he never tell me? Why did he never tell Griff? Was he ever going to tell me? Or was he too mad about one mistake I made to ever let me that close again?_

Spinning around and around in her head the questions made her dizzy. So she didn't think about them. She pushed them away, and he was shoved with them, distant and blocked away from her, for whatever small distance she could manage.

It had been working too.

Until she was on her way back to her chambers to change out of her training clothes and into something to meet her mother in, when she felt a hand wrap carefully around her elbow and pull her aside before she could make sense of what was happening.

It was the room from before, she realized. The one he'd hidden her in when there was the attack on the lower towns the night before he'd been stationed as her guard.

It was smaller than she remembered. More of a closet than a room, with just enough space for the two of them to squeeze into, a few inches of empty air between them.

Bellamy pulled the door shut behind them, the soft click of it latching the only thing she could hear besides her own breathing, heavy and labored, still not back to normal from her practice.

"What do you think-"

"Princess," he said, but it wasn't like the night before. There was no bite to it. No venom behind it. It was pleading and soft and just open enough for her to bite down on her own lip and let him finish. "Please."

She sighed, grumbling as she leaned back into the wall, her arms crossing over her chest.

"Only if you stop calling me that," she said.

A flicker of a smile played at the corner of his lips, but it was gone before she could let it sink in.

He relaxed a bit though, some of the tightness in his shoulders easing as he leaned toward her to speak, low as if he was afraid someone else would hear them, locked away in the closet.

"No one can find out," he began, slowly. His voice was tentative and fragile, too proud to beg, but desperate enough to ask. "I don't know what Octavia told you, about what I did, and how I got here, but you have to keep it a secret. Please."

It wasn't quite what she thought he was going to say. Foolishly she'd thought that maybe, just _maybe_ , he'd pulled her aside to ask her to forgive him, to tell her that he was wrong to react how he did when he found out her secret, that he was only putting on a show because his ego was wounded. That now that they were back on level ground, he could look past it, be her friend again if she'd let him.

But he just wanted to make sure his own secret was safe. She shook her head at herself for being so naive.

"Fine, Sir Bellamy," she said, and he frowned. "I promise I won't tell anyone. Now please move, these clothes are soaked through and I'd like to be able to change before-"

"Clarke," he interrupted. He brought his eyes back to hers then, wide, and sadder than she remembered. He took a step forward, filling the small gap of broken air between them. He looked like he was about to argue, to block her in and work her up, like all those nights ago, goading her until she snapped. But then he sighed, letting his head drop before speaking again.

"I would have told you, you know. Back before I knew who you were."

"Oh," she said. It was good, she thought, that there was some version of herself out there that he trusted. She wished it was the one he knew now, but it was good. That's what she told herself. "Okay, well." She swallowed unsure how to go on.

"I know you're angry," he continued. "And I know you think it's the same, but it's not."

"It _is_ ," Clarke growled.

"It's not!"

His voice cried out, angry, but a desperate sort of angry. His brows were creased, his entire face folded in on itself, trying to hide what he was feeling, but his breath was heavy and labored and his eyes were boring into hers with too much intensity for a person who claimed not to care.

"It's...it's not the same, Clarke," he said. "Don't you see that? Can't you understand that?"

He shook his head. His hand reached out to the hem of her practice shirt, catching it between his thumb and his forefinger, rubbing the pads of his thumb across the worn, thin fabric. It was thinner and more plain than the clothes she usually wore, and it was soaked through, almost to the hem, with her sweat from training. She thought for a moment that it wasn't too different than the clothes Octavia had shoved in her hands the night before, or the ones Wells had given her to sneak out in, when she slipped into the armory, pretending to be a lowly kitchen servant named Griff.

She caught his eyes boring into the thin fabric of the shirt, his fingers still running back and forth along the hem, and she wondered if that's what he was thinking. That she could be Griff now, a servant girl trapped in this closet with him. Not a princess, not a task, just a kitchen maid only inches from him, already close enough to count the freckles on his nose.

Suddenly it felt much too warm in the closet beside him.

He started again.

"When you lied," his voice rumbled lowly from his chest. "You made yourself someone lower than you are. You pretended to be my equal."

 _I am_ , she wanted to say, but she couldn't. She knew that's not really what she was.

But she wanted it, she so desperately wanted to go back to how she felt those nights out on the practice field, unafraid to say what she wanted or be who she wanted, to be happy with whomever she wanted.

"And now," he said. "I'm lower than I was before. Not a noble, not a knight, not a merchant, nobody respectable. A street rat." He spat the word, looking disgusted with himself. "Someone miles below Griff. Someone you can't even see."

 _I can_. The words were stuck in her throat, clawing their way up, choking her up. She reached her hand out, just inches in front of her, placing it on the forearm of the arm still stuck fast to the bottom of her shirt.

"Bellamy," she said. He seemed to startle out of his thoughts when she said his name, yanking his hand away from her and stepping back. "I-"

"Don't," he said, flippantly, turning back toward the door. "I didn't say it for you to pity me. I said it so that you know, what you did? It's not the same as what I did."

And suddenly she was alone, the cramped closet feeling entirely too large for just her.

She walked a bit slower after that.

Only when he would begin to lag behind, a few steps further away than usual, he noticed, she'd suddenly walk so slow that three of his steps covered one of hers and soon they'd be walking side by side again.

He felt a permanent flush over his face then, her eyes always on him, and he wasn't sure if the cold burst that fluttered through his stomach every time she brushed past him was from nerves or embarrassment, but he knew it was only his own fault. For pulling her in for trying to make her understand.

The only thing he made clear was that he was even further below her than she thought she knew. And that he achingly, desperately wished it weren't so.

Which was, looking back on it, ill-advised.

Because she knew, now. She must have figured it out within moments of him latching that door behind him. Just exactly how much things had changed for him.

She caught his eye and smiled over her dinner plate and he felt something very dangerous bloom in his chest.

" _You seem unusually happy," Octavia said to him, ripping into the fresh loaf of bread Griff had snuck him from the castle kitchens. She'd wrapped it up in a thick blue cloth, handing it to him the night before, still warm like she'd kept it toasting by a fire until she'd brought it to him._

" _It's not unusual for me to be happy," he protested nibbling on a small piece, trying not to groan at the taste._

 _It wasn't like he didn't eat. And he wasn't eating scraps or moldy bread or rotten meats or berries that had just gone bad like he had before he'd worked his way into the guard. But rarely were the knights ever given anything that good. It tasted like Griff had plucked right from the princess's table, and brought it to him._

" _It's that girl, isn't it?" Octavia smirked over at him. "That kitchen girl you've been training."_

 _He rolled his eyes. "I'm not training her, I'm teaching her."_

" _You're wooing her is what you're doing."_

 _Bellamy nearly choked on his food. He glanced up at Octavia who was staring at him with a knowing look on her face, looking even more smug with every nibble she took out of her half of the bread._

 _He pictured Griff sitting beside him, along the wall after they'd finished practicing. Tired and sweaty, her cheeks red with heat, a few beads of sweat working their way down and across her forehead, but a wide smile overpowering her face. She looked pleased every time a new blister showed up on her palms, like the pain was nothing, like it was a mark of what she could do, what she could withstand to get there, and he felt a small prickle just behind his ribcage._

 _He schooled his face into something serious._

" _I'm not wooing her," he insisted._

" _A kitchen maid too far below you?"_

 _She was teasing, he knew that. Trying to goad him and joke with him, like they always did. It was different for her ever since he moved into the castle, and he didn't think she noticed that she did it, but she liked to remind him with little remarks like those, exactly where he came from. Exactly who he was._

" _She doesn't care about things like that," he snapped._

" _Bell," she said softly. "You know I didn't mean it like that."_

 _He nodded. He knew that. It wasn't her fault he was overly sensitive about all that. If anything, it was his own fault. Forcing himself into a place he didn't belong. Always feeling like someone knew his secret, like he'd be thrown back into the streets-or worse-when they found out._

" _She's scared," he said. Octavia nodded, like he didn't need to explain to her, but he plowed on anyway. "No one should be left feeling vulnerable like that. If an attack happens on the castle, you think they're going to send guards down to protect the servants?"_

 _He pictured Griff, down in the kitchens, flour on her face, her awkwardly fitting clothes soaked through with sweat from the ovens, sneaking food to the kids who ran around the castle grounds, the knights who were nice to her, to other servants._

" _They aren't going to station guards in front of the kitchens."_

 _Octavia nodded again._

" _It's a good thing you're doing, big brother," she said, reaching over and patting him on the shoulder. "But you're thick in the head if you think that I believe for a minute that it's your honor as a knight that's taking you down to that practice field five nights out of the week." He opened his mouth to protest but she cut him off. "Maybe it started out that way, but you have to face it. You want to woo the kitchen girl."_

 _He felt a nervous flutter in the pit of his stomach, her words ringing around in his head as he pictured Griff reaching out for his hand, rubbing the salve on it to soothe the blisters they got from sparring so long. It was nothing, he told himself._

 _He was just helping out a friend._

The bells were ringing out, startling Bellamy awake from where he was slumped, practically snoring against the outside of Clarke's door.

He jolted upright, the back of his head slamming painfully into the wood behind him.

He scrambled to regain his balance, to get his bearings back, while there was shouting all around him. He heard footsteps pound into the floors of the stone corridors, running in both directions, voices ringing out from around every corner.

 _The bells_ , he reminded himself.

Then he stopped, a cool breath slipping out of him. The bells. They were under attack.

Those same bells were the ones that rang out the night the lower towns were attacked, when he'd found Griff running down to the armory, getting ready to fight in a battle she wasn't ready for.

His hands felt numb as he fumbled with the door, slipping off the handle in a cool sweat more than once before he managed to pull it open.

"Clarke!" he yelled running in, knowing, deep in the pit of his stomach, exactly what he would find there.

He'd hoped she would prove him wrong, He'd hoped she'd be there, sitting at her table, sketching, or sleeping in her bed. That he'd find her sitting perched on the edge of her mattress, reading.

He felt the cool breeze from the open window wash over him, sending a long shiver up his spine, as his chest tightened, all of the airs pushed out of his constricted lungs.

He slammed his palm against the window.

"Clarke, dammit!" he shouted, though she couldn't hear him.

He slammed the window shut, wishing only for a moment that he could feel the glass cracking against his hand from the force, and then he tore from the room.

She couldn't see Monty.

There was smoke and flames spitting out at her everywhere she turned. Screams from every side flooded her ears, coming in as waves, drowning out any other sound in the alley. Someone had knocked her down as they ran past her, shoving her onto her knees, her hands scraping against cool stone as she fell, the skin of her palms cracking, little trickles of blood seeping out from the small wounds.

"Monty!" she shouted, scrambling up. She wiped her palms on her trousers wincing at the pain for only a moment before she held her hands out in front of her, feeling her way through the crowd. "Monty!"

She felt bodies knock into her from all sides, going in every direction. They didn't know what way to run. She didn't know where the attacks were coming from, or who. All she knew was that one minute she was walking side by side with Monty, dropping supplies off at their last house, when she heard the thunder of footsteps and then the first home went up in flames.

After that everything was a blur.

Monty had been pulled from her side, she'd been shuffled around and spun in every direction, knocked down repeatedly, all the while the panic around her grew and grew.

She felt a hand wrap around her elbow and pull her, spinning her until she faced her left hand side, prying her away from the crowds. She couldn't quite make out who is was, but her heart sped in her chest at the sight of a mop of brown hair ahead of her, pulling her out behind him.

When she squeezed herself out of the crowd they stopped, Finn turning around and greeting her with a smile.

"Oh," she said. "Finn."

"Hey, princess," he said. She scrunched her nose up at the name. "Let's get you home, shall we?"

It was eerie, seeing him so calm in the midst of all the chaos. Flashing her a smile and a wink, not shaken at all by what was raging around him. It felt off, it left a sour taste in her mouth, and Clarke wanted nothing more than to rip her arm from his grip.

"Where's Monty?" she said, straining her neck to look for him. Finn reached for her arm again, trying to shuffle her further away from the chaos.

"He'll be fine Clarke," he said, sounding bored. "Harper's out looking for him too. Come on, you have to get back to the castle."

"I'm not leaving without Monty!"

More screams filled the air, and she saw it, the fire, spreading wide and long down the street, chasing the feet of those trying to outrun it, and suddenly she didn't have a choice anymore. She was being pushed along by those running behind her, Finn keeping a tight grip on her, pulling her along when he felt her slow down or resist.

It was pointless. It was either run or be trampled. She couldn't navigate her own senses, there was too much going on, so she let herself be pushed and pulled along, eyes watering from the smoke, skin bruising from the blows and the bodies that slammed into her.

Yanking her to the side, Finn twisted them down a narrow alley, the same one Octavia had led her down just nights before, and soon they were back within the walls of the castle grounds.

"You have somewhere you can go?" he was asking her, but she felt like she was underwater. She was coughing from all the smoke in her lungs, and she couldn't see, her eyes watering too much for her vision to clear. The sounds of all the screams were still ringing in her head, over and over and over, stuck in her ears, and she couldn't hear anything else. Finn's hands gripped her shoulders," shaking her. "Clarke! You need to go somewhere safe to hide, can you do that?"

She thought of the room Bellamy had shoved her into the first time this had happened, the one she'd been back in only days before. She found herself nodding without realizing she was doing it.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. Go there. Go there now."

"What about you?" she asked. He couldn't go back into the towns, it was too dangerous. He didn't know how to fight, he had no weapon. He'd get hurt. He had to hide too.

"I've got something I need to take care of," he said. "Clarke! Go hide, now. Go!"

And then she thought it must have been all the smoke still swirling around her head, making her hallucinate, but instead of turning around and going back into the towns, Finn pushed forward into the castle without her.

She was dressed like Griff when she barreled into him, the flimsy trousers and ratty shirt, missing only the cap from the top of her head, and for a moment he thought he was dreaming, that this was all just a memory from the attack from the weeks before, and he felt the temptation to pinch his arm, to wake himself up.

But then he noticed the dirt on her face, the blood dried on the palm of her hands, the way her hair was matted around her face.

"Clarke-"

"Bellamy!" she cried, noticing exactly who it was, gripping her shoulders, steadying her so she wouldn't tumble to the ground. She felt light under his hands, like if he let go she would tip over without any push. She snapped back to him, her eyes taking in his disheveled state. She ran her thumb over a small scorch mark on his shirt, fingers swatting off the clumps of dirt that still clung to the fabric. She raked her eyes over his face, pausing where he knew a red mark rested on his cheek. "What happened to you?" she breathed.

"Your window was open. I went down to the towns looking for you, Octavia said she saw you with that man, the one from the alley, heading back in this direction-" he stopped short, catching his breath. She wasn't even listening to him, her eyes were darting all over the corridor, and she was fidgeting, prying herself away from his grip. "Clarke!"

She jerked her eyes back up to him.

"We have to go," he said, afraid of exactly how much desperation was slipping through his tone. "We have to go now, come on."

He started down the opposite direction, his hand on her arm, pulling him with her but she didn't move. "Clarke!"

"He's still here," she said, quietly. "Said he had something to take care of."

"Clarke," Bellamy walked back over to her. His hands rested gently over her shoulders. "Who are you talking about?"

"He knew," she whispered. "He must have known, he wasn't even surprised. Bellamy he _smiled_."

"Who?" he asked again. "Clarke who are you talking about?"

"Finn!" she yelled. He remembered the smirking boy from her room, the one she wouldn't tell him about. The one Octavia told him was friendly with the forest clans, who lived out on the edge of the towns, appointing himself the ambassador between worlds, between people.

She was moving down the hall, chasing after whatever hunch she had about Finn's business in the castle, and Bellamy followed her, keeping his hand on the small of her back, He wasn't losing track of her again. Not tonight.

It seemed to happen in slow motion. One minute she was shuffling along the walls of the corridors, Bellamy pressed into her side, his body covering hers anytime there were footsteps coming their way- _his job_ , she reminded herself every time he flattened himself against her, _he's not worried, it's his job-_ and then the next she was standing, out in the middle of her mother's chambers, watching Finn pull a vial from his pocket, tipping it forward so it dripped inside a goblet on her mother's table.

"What are you doing?"

Her voice was barely more than a whisper, but Finn whipped around at the sound of it, the vial dripping out onto the table as he turned.

"Clarke-"

"What are you doing?" she asked again. She stepped toward him slowly, each step heavy, and reached out her hand for the vial but he tipped backwards on his heels, pulling it away from her. "What are you _doing_?"

She said it over and over and over again, watching his face twist up with guilt or fear, or whatever it was, demanding an answer she already knew. Bellamy stayed steady behind her, his hand still resting on her back, where it had been all night, never leaving, reminding her.

"They're coming, Clarke," Finn said. A shaky hand was pointed toward the door. She'd expected him to sound smooth and confident like he always did, expected a small smirk to pull up the corner of his lips, but there was nothing. Desperation and fear, and a hollowness she didn't recognize in him. "Burning down the villages and pillaging the towns, and they're going to ride in here and take the castle too."

She shook her head, willing the tears she felt about to burst from her eyes to go back down, to wait, because it was too much, it was all too much.

"We can stop this, Clarke," he said. "Isn't one life worth saving the lives of your people?"

She felt a white hot rage wash over her, starting from the tips of her toes, pressing into every inch of her as it worked its way up to her head. She lunged forward, knocking into Finn's arm, sending the vial tumbling to the ground and landing with a _crack_.

Finn pounded on the table, a small, anguished cry slipping out from his lips.

"Get out!" she screamed.

Finn reached for her, but Bellamy snapped an arm out in front of her, grabbing Finn's arm and twisting it back behind him, pinning Finn in place.

"Please," he said, and she saw stray tear work it's way down his face. "We can stop this, we can save them."

She shook her head.

"And what then?" Bellamy's voice was faint, scratchy. "You think this will stop a war? You think one death is enough?"

He looked like he was about to spit in Finn's face. She'd never seen him so angry. The only time it had ever even been close was the day he found out who she really was, but it was a different sort of anger then. A soft, broken fury he pulled over himself by choice, not the hard and cold anger that was rolling off of him now.

"You have to go," Finn whispered.

She felt Bellamy's hand on her shoulder.

"He's right, Clarke," he said. "Come on, we have to go."

She watched the liquid drip out among the broken pieces of glass at her feet as her vision blurred. Her arm swiped roughly against her eyes, brushing away the tears that hadn't fallen as she let Bellamy guide her out of the room.

"Wait," she said, still following him. "Wells-"

Bellamy shook his head.

"Wells is waiting for us in the east wing of the castle," he said, checking up and down the hall to see if it was clear. "Come on, we have to move."

She let the sound of their feet slapping against the stone floor lull her away from what was happening. She felt like she was out of her own body, watching from the outside as Bellamy stopped, pressing the hilt of a dagger into her hand with one raise of an eyebrow.

"If we're separated," he said by means of explanation.

Before she could think to hard about it, his face was ducking down to hers, his lips pressing, rough and chapped, against her own. She felt his hand grip tighter in her hair, like he was afraid she was already gone, and she breathed in the smell of the fire and dirt and soot that covered his skin.

Then they were moving once again, creeping through the shadows, hiding in her own home, making their way to the gate at the east wing.

 _She tossed Wells a stick. "Come on," she said. "You said you could beat me and now you have to prove it."_

 _Wells reached down, picking the stick up from the ground. "I can beat you," he insited. "But I'm a better friend than you, so I won't."_

 _Clarke picked up a clump of dirt at her feet, knocking her stick into it, spraying it all over Wells._

" _Fine," she said, swinging it around to rest on her shoulder. "I'm just trying to help. You are going to be a knight one day after all."_

 _Wells stuck out his tongue. "Why don't we do something to help you practice? How's your curtsey coming?"_

 _He pulled his branch out in front of him just in time to block the blow from Clarke. She stuck her tongue out right back at him as she pulled back and straightened up. She adjusted until she was in some sort of position that felt right, the stick out in front of her, her feet wide apart, motioning to Wells to come forward, to play along._

" _Alright, Griffin," he said rolling his eyes. "Just this once."_

"There's too many," a voice mumbled in his ear. Bellamy turned to his right to see Wells looking out at their only escape route, flooded with armed men from the forest clans. "There's no way we're going to make it past them."

Wells met his eye, biting his lip. He watched as Wells' eyes flickered to Clarke, to himself, to the army standing between them and their only way left out of the castle. He nodded to Bellamy.

It clicked in Bellamy's head, what Wells wanted to do, and he opened his mouth to protest, but Wells clapped him on the shoulder before he could.

"See you on the other side, brother," he said, and before Bellamy's hand could cling on to any part of him, his hand, his arm, the sleeve of his shirt, Wells was out, exposed in the open, his sword shaking in his right hand.

"Wells!"

Clarke wriggled beside him, trying to push her way out with Wells, but Bellamy wrapped an arm around the front of her, holding her in place.

"Don't make it for nothing," he whispered in her ear. She struggled in his grip, still trying to get out to Wells, but Bellamy's hold was too strong. She went limp and he was able to drag her along the open wall, crouching down low, hiding her against his chest, until they were slipping out of the gate, the sound of swords clashing behind them.

He stopped, pulling her up to face him. Her eyes were red and watery, puffed up along the outside, but she held herself up straight in front of him.

He held his arms out and she walked into him, her face buried into the dirty fabric of his shirt. He pulled her in close, one hand over her hair, the other resting on her back. He hoped his breathing was heavy enough still that she couldn't hear the banging from behind the wall or the yelling and burning they'd left behind.

"I'm sorry, Clarke," he said, but the words felt small and hollow, not nearly enough. He pressed his lips to the top her hair and hoped she knew.

Clarke pressed her nose harder against Bellamy's shirt, wishing that it would all go away, that she would wake up to find it all was just a horrible dream.

Footsteps pounded behind her, nearly blending in with all the other noise around them.

"Well," a voice from beside her said. "Isn't this touching."

Suddenly there were hands on her hair, yanking her backwards out of Bellamy's grip. She watched as his eyes widened, watching her get ripped away from him. Another came up behind him, a blade to his throat, daring him to move.

"Bellamy-" she said.

He gripped the arm of the man behind him, keeping the blade from cutting his skin, just as she snapped back, crashing her skull into the nose of the man behind her, hearing a sickening _crack_ as it made contact. The arms dropped from her, going up to his nose to stop the blood gushing forward and she had just enough time to scramble down and grab the dagger Bellamy had given her.

"Clarke," she heard Bellamy whisper, desperate. She glanced up at him but his eyes were wide and stuck on something behind her. "Griff!"

And then everything went black.

She woke up to the smell of a fire burning and she jolted upright, thinking she was still in the towns, still beside the burning houses. After a second she realized she was laid out on a small patch of grass, some strange cloak draped over her as a blanket. The woods. She was in the woods.

She felt a hand on her arm.

Looking to her side, she found Bellamy lying next to her, propped up on one elbow, his other hand resting on her forearm. His thumb swept back and forth across the skin there.

"You alright?" he asked.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"There was a group outside the wall," he said. "Waiting. They knew people were going to try and escape through the exit in the east wing. We think the soldiers Wells distracted were meant as a diversion." _We?_ Clarke could hear the faint sound of voices in the distant, the smell of food being cooked over a fire, but she didn't know who else made it out. "They knocked you out, and were about to do the same to me, when these guys showed up."

He gestured around him, at a camp Clarke hadn't noticed she was sleeping in.

"Who's here?"

Bellamy shrugged. "Some have been living here for years. Not with the forest clan, just outside them. Others are just the scraps of whoever is left."

 _Wells?_ she wanted to ask. _Monty?_

But the look in Bellamy's eye told her everything she needed to know.

He bumped her shoulder, brushing a strand of hair out of her face and forcing a smile. "Welcome to your new kingdom, princess."

The camp was run by a girl named Raven. She was loud and blunt, and told Clarke right away that she didn't care whether she was the princess of every kingdom in the realm, or the girl who emptied the chamber pots.

"You can stay here," she said to her. "Make camp as long as you like, but if you're going to stay with us, you're going to have to help."

Bellamy guided her around the camp at first. He told her that it was a group of outlaws. They lived in forest territories between borders, stealing for food and clothes, never camping in one place for too long. They took people in after the attacks within the city, but most were there for a safe resting spot, to recuperate a little, before moving on, west, into the bordering kingdom.

According to Bellamy, the group of rebel soldiers had gotten a hold of the castle.

"We think Wells might still be there," he mumbled into her ear one night around the fire. "Sort of like a royal prisoner, since they couldn't get you."

The pang of guilt was sharp and quick, but faded easy enough when she reminded herself that maybe if it weren't for that, Wells might have already been killed.

"No word from Monty yet," he said.

"We have to get Wells," she said.

He nodded, she knew he would. Her mind flashed back to all those weeks ago, to the man standing in the shadows, watching a lonely kitchen maid swing a sword wildly at a dummy, to the man who stepped out and offered to help her, the man who lied for years, put his life on the line, because he wanted to help somebody else.

"Can't do it on our own," he said. "We need a plan."

Clarke glanced around the camp, the fire dancing in front of her, making the faces glow orange around her. She stood up, walking over to where Raven sat on the other side of the fire, Bellamy's footsteps crunching behind her.

"I need your help getting back into the city," she told Raven.

Raven raised one eyebrow at her, a slow smile curving up her lips. A man huffed out a laugh beside her. "You better give me a good reason for that, princess," she said.

Clarke glanced back at Bellamy. He was biting down on his lip as he watched her, and odd sort of fondness playing in his eyes.

"You survive off raids, right? Picking off carts that travel through here?" she asked. Raven only nodded. "What if I could help you raid the castle?"

Raven studied her for a moment, deciding whether or not to believe her. Eventually she say back on her elbows, smiling up at Clarke.

"Careful, Your Highness," she said. "You just might actually fit in around here."


End file.
